Ron DeSantis’ Silence On Florida Abortion Ban Speaks Volumes

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If you want to know how abortion politics is playing out in America today, pay attention to a pair of high-profile governors who just signed major abortion-related legislation – and, more importantly, pay attention to how they signed it.

The first is Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat from Michigan. Last week, he sign the bill officially repealed the state’s 1931 abortion ban.

The bill is, in some respects, symbolic. A ballot measure that voters approved in November put reproductive rights guarantees into the Michigan constitution. Abortion will remain legal in the state as long as the amendment is part of the charter.

But Whitmer cares about the symbolism now, because she’s trying to send a message about reproductive rights in Michigan — and how hard she’ll fight for them now that the Supreme Court has it. overturned Roe v. Wadeleave discretion over abortion to the state.

That’s why, during his re-election campaign last year, Whitmer wore a T-shirt that said “November.” Therefore, during him Country Country address, he called Michigan a haven for access to abortion, hailed the legislator who has fought to protect that status and firmly linked reproductive rights to a broader vision for freedom.

This is also why, when he signed the bill that repealed the 1931 ban, he did it in front of the camera, the well organized evening ceremonywhile wearing a bright pink blazer with a gold pin that read “Bans Off Our Body.”

The other governor is Ron DeSantis, a Republican from Florida. Last Thursday night, with little fanfare, which sign the bill ban abortion after six weeks.

The devastating consequences for women mean nothing symbolic about Florida’s bill. As HuffPost’s Alanna Vagianos has explained in her coverage, most women don’t know they’re pregnant at the six-week mark. A limited exception in the law for rape or incest requires “a copy of a restraining order, police report, medical record, or court order or other documentation” that would be difficult for many to obtain. And with these new restrictions, Florida will no longer be an abortion option for women from neighboring states that have banned the books.

The Florida Supreme Court could still intervene, and use a separate lawsuit to rule that the ban violates the state constitution. But, as Vagianos noted, abortion rights advocates aren’t optimistic that the court is now full of DeSantis appointees.

Florida’s new ban is a victory for abortion rights opponents as Michigan’s amendment is a victory for abortion rights supporters. But DeSantis isn’t too eager to talk about it yet.

And this is not a new development.

After praising the summer Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe and vowing to “work to expand pro-life protections,” DeSantis spent his re-election campaign avoiding questions about what it meant. In March, during his State of the State address, he included only one brief and rather bland reference to abortion: “We are proud to be pro-life in the state of Florida.”

He could not talk about the six-week ban while the legislature was debating it and on Thursday, when he signed in, he did so in an unannounced ceremony after 10:30 p.m. Journalists learn about it. a few minutes later, when the governor’s office distributed a press release that included a single quote from DeSantis along with a photo — taken, apparently, from just the current camera. (“Apparently,” because the governor’s office did not respond to HuffPost’s questions sent Friday morning.)

The following morning – that is, Friday morning – DeSantis gave a speech at Liberty University, an evangelical school founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell and famous for his ultra-conservative politics. He did not mention the ban.

To be clear, there’s no reason to think DeSantis feels any less strongly about the bill he just signed than Whitmer felt about the one he signed the week before. But there’s reason to think he’s even more nervous about the legislation, as he prepares to run for president — and, while Florida’s ban will please many Republican primary voters, it’s likely to drive away the independent voters he needs to win. in the general election.

This is the core political dilemma they face – and other parties too.

Clearly, a nearly two-thirds majority of Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the latest PRRI poll. That’s up from 55% in 2010. And only 9% think abortion should be illegal all the time, down from 15% the same time. Other polls on abortion have produced similar results, with signs of increased support for abortion rights now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe.

A headline in Politico last week captured the situation perfectly: “Abortion is a 50/50 issue. Now, it’s Republican quicksand.

And it’s not just abortion where Republicans have embraced that politically toxic position. It is also opposition to popular and modest gun regulations, coupled with a refusal to recognize that President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election is legitimate.

The need to unconditionally retract former President Donald Trump’s outlandish fraud claims is particularly problematic for Republicans because it requires a willingness to suspend basic intellectual functioning — or, perhaps, the lack of such functioning in the first place. Candidates who meet these criteria tend not to do well on the campaign trail, which helps explain why Arizona currently has a Democratic governor, for example, and Georgia has elected no Republicans to the U.S. Senate. (It also helped Whitmer win Michigan.)

But no issue is as politically powerful as abortion today, perhaps because of the direct and immediate threat to the bodily autonomy of half the population today when Roe is gone. Reproductive rights are by all accounts a big (and possibly the biggest) reason Democrats running in Congress have avoided the usual backlash for the incumbent party in the midterms, and why they’ve made big gains at the state level.

That clearly does not guarantee that abortion will be the deciding factor in the 2024 election. The surprise of the Supreme Court’s decision may disappear by then. America can adjust to a new normal, where abortion is legal in some states and illegal in others.

But normal includes a stream of high-profile stories like the one reporter Caroline Kitchener wrote for The Washington Post this week. It’s about a pregnant woman in Florida whose membranes ruptured 16 weeks into her pregnancy. Instead of inducing an abortion, which is the standard of obstetric care, doctors remembered the 15-week ban DeSantis signed into law last year sending her home. He almost died.

News like that can keep abortion on the minds of voters, no matter how Republicans try to avoid or downplay the topic.

Republicans also continue their crusade to further ban abortions through the courts — and they won, as they did last week with a lawsuit to overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, a pill used in medical abortions.

Doctors have been prescribing it for over 20 years, for millions of patients. Experts like to say that its safety record compares favorably with common drugs like Tylenol and penicillin. But three Trump-appointed judges — one at the district level, two at the circuit level — have now overruled the FDA, at least in part, and limited access to the pill.

The US Supreme Court will have the final say on the matter, and as always, it’s anyone’s guess how they will rule. The legal reasoning of these Trump-appointed judges is as weak as scientific logic, so it’s possible that the court will keep the abortion pill on the market. Then again, this is the same conservative court that overruled Roe in the first place.

Democrats have reacted to the decision with a blistering attack on the GOP’s anti-abortion crusade. Republicans have once again tried to change the subject, sometimes for comical effect – as South Carolina Senator and GOP presidential candidate Tim Scott did twice this week when dodging questions about whether he supports the ban.

But access to mifepristone (which, in many cases, is the same as access to abortion) will depend on the opinion of nine unelected, democratically unreliable judges. This is also a sign of the times.

The places where the GOP’s crusade against abortion rights is making the most progress are the places where voters have the least direct influence — whether in the courts, in the hands of judges serving life terms, or in deeply red, heavily gerrymandered states, where Republican lawmakers have a virtual lock on power.

Florida is one of those states, naturally. One of DeSantis’ most significant actions as governor was to reject the redistricting map drawn by the legislature, in favor of voting from his office.

The legislative map has been gerrymandered in a way that helps Republicans. DeSantis’ map tilted the district even more in favor of the GOP, and led to an even larger GOP majority in Tallahassee. This helps explain why a six-week ban is possible in a country where, polls suggest, a majority of citizens think abortion should remain legal in most circumstances.

Here, too, the contrast with Michigan is instructive. It wasn’t just the voters’ reaction to abortion that re-elected Whitmer and allowed Democrats to take control of the state legislature for the first time in more than 40 years. It’s also a previously enacted voter initiative that turns sections over to independent commissions, undermining longstanding and heavy-handed pro-Republican gerrymandering.

Without the commission’s new map, the Michigan legislature is still under GOP control for now. And the 1931 zombie abortion ban is still on the books.

All this shows that the fight for reproductive rights, like many issues today, cannot be separated from the fight for democracy. Voters overall have no appetite for the type of abortion ban DeSantis just signed; the actions themselves make that clear. But public opinion is only important if the public can actually speak. And it doesn’t always happen.