TAMPA, Fla. — Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida says their telephones have been ringing off the hooks within the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned.
“It’s been quite a few weeks,” the group’s CEO Stephanie Fraim, ” People seeking abortion care there’s just been a huge increase.”
But they add that now with Florida’s 15-week-abortion law being dominated unconstitutional by a circuit county choose, there’s some confusion on the place sure abortions stand in our state.
“July 1st we will not be providing abortion care post 15 weeks because of the confusion,” stated Fraim.
That’s as a result of the choose hasn’t truly signed the paperwork which might briefly block that law from going into impact on Friday. And it is doubtless that he will not get an opportunity to signal it till early subsequent week. Meaning the law technically can be in impact for just a few days.
It’s some extent McKenna Kelley, a volunteer with the Tampa Bay Abortion Fund (TBAF) says the group needs to drive house. That stated, Kelley provides that the group additionally needs people to know that they may nonetheless have choices in the event that they’re in search of an abortion after 15 weeks proper now.
“We will be here to help you access care, it’s just not going to be in Florida,” stated Kelley.
And Kelley goes on to say that even after the choose indicators that injunction, the present confusion will not instantly clear up.
“It may take clinics a little bit of time to just sort through the legal ramifications and the logistical ramifications around that 15-week point or after that 15-week point,” she stated, “So it may still be necessary even after the injunction is signed for people seeking an abortion at or after 15-weeks to go out of state until the dust settles essentially.”
And whereas abortion rights advocates and suppliers work by these logistics they’re additionally celebrating the choose’s general choice. But on the opposite facet of issues —the native state senator who sponsored the invoice behind this law, Kelli Stargell, says this injunction was an anticipated roadblock.
“The governor said today he was going appeal it and it would go the First DCA (District Court of Appeal) and they would uphold that our law is constitutional,” she stated.
Stargell additionally tells ABC Action News that she’s assured the U.S. Supreme Court would uphold the law if the struggle makes it that far. And if not, she provides {that a} new model of the law would doubtless be launched within the close to future.
“I know there are a lot of other legislators in addition to me who very much support the legislation that we’ve done and I feel confident that they’ll take up the mantle and continue to push to protect babies in our state,” she stated.
The lack of abortion exceptions on this contested law has additionally drawn plenty of criticism. And ABC Action News additionally requested Stargell if she supported the potential for expanded exceptions in future abortion law proposals in Florida, or amendments to the present law.
“I think it’s a bottom line of whether you think that baby in the womb is a life separate and apart from its mother. And I believe that it is. Just because the baby may have been conceived in a way, whether it was incest or rape, it’s still a separate and apart human being and I think it has the right to live and I think to exist,” she stated, “The mother doesn’t have to keep it and raise it, she can put it up for adoption, there’s a lot of wonderful organizations that will take the baby but I don’t think victim because of the way in which it was conceived.”