PUNTA GORDA, Florida–President Joe Biden took to Twitter on March 4 to say his administration “will not stand” for the “dangerous” abortion bill passed by the Florida State Senate.
The bill, which prohibits most abortions after 15 weeks and makes no exceptions for rape and incest, was also seen by the president as limiting women’s rights.
In the late hours of March 3, the Florida Senate voted 23 to 15 in favor of the bill, sending it to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s desk.
“I think the protections are warranted, and I think we’ll be able to sign that in short order,” the Republican governor said at a March 4 press conference in Jacksonville. He said he considered an abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy to be “late-term.”
Once the governor signs the bill into law, it will go into effect July 1. According to the bill, an abortion can be performed after 15 weeks only if two doctors certify a “fatal fetal abnormality” that would “result in death upon birth or imminently thereafter.” Another exception would be if abortion is “necessary to save the pregnant woman’s life” or “avert serious bodily injury.”
Abortion is currently legal up to the 24th week of pregnancy in Florida. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision this summer on the Mississippi 15-week abortion ban, which Florida’s bill was tailored after, and lower courts have blocked from taking effect.
Legislators from both sides of the aisle have debated the bill, telling of personal—often tragic—stories of their own experiences with abortion.
State Rep. Dana Trabulsy, a Republican, said she had been raped and supports the “right to life,” even though she had an abortion when she was younger and it “still affects her to this day.”
“It is something I have regretted every day since,” she said during the Feb. 17 committee hearing. “I am ashamed because I will never get to know the unborn child I could have had.”
State Rep. Robin Bartleman, a Democrat, also shared during the Feb. 17 hearing how she and her husband “wrestled with a difficult decision” when an abnormality was detected during her pregnancy.
“Floridians won’t be able to make their own decisions if they face a similar medical complication,” Bartleman told fellow legislators.
“When you get that news, you and your husband and your family have no decision,” she said. “It is taken away from you because of an arbitrary number—15 weeks.”
The Florida Constitution comprises privacy protections that have been interpreted in the past by the Florida Supreme Court as protecting a right to abortion. DeSantis has filled three of the seven seats with conservative judges who would hear any appeals to the bill once it is signed into law.
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