TALLAHASSEE — Republican lawmakers voted Thursday to advance a six-week abortion ban all through its first prevent in committee, regardless of intense opposition from dozens of audio system.
The 13-5 vote alongside celebration strains complex House Bill 7 filed via Republican Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka of Fort Myers. It seeks to ban abortions after six weeks of being pregnant and contains exceptions for circumstances by which the mum is dealing with critical harm or demise, the fetus has a deadly abnormality, or if the being pregnant was once the results of rape or incest. Florida regulation lately bans the process after 15 weeks. Sen. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, filed a similar bill in her chamber.
“This bill that I’m proposing today is the result of listening and the result of caring,” Persons-Mulicka said during the Healthcare Regulation Subcommittee meeting. “It’s a bill that recognizes the importance and value of the life of innocent unborn human beings.”
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The meeting featured more than an hour of emotional testimony, mostly from women and others who opposed the bill. Several noted that many people don’t know they’re pregnant until after six weeks of pregnancy and that Florida’s current 15-week ban is in the middle of a legal challenge.
“House Bill 7, if passed, would be devastating to my patients, to women, to families all throughout Florida,” said Dr. Alex Monaco, an obstetrician gynecologist at the University of Florida. “I think you all want to be good people, and I understand that you want to restrict abortion, but you must understand that there are nuances in pregnancy and abortion care … I beg of you on behalf of my colleagues and my patients to please oppose this bill. It’s not too late to do the right thing.”
The bill also forbids doctors from using telehealth to provide an abortion and mandates that doctors must be “bodily found in the similar room as the girl when the termination of being pregnant is carried out or when doling out abortion-inducing medicine.”
Along with abortion restrictions, the legislation calls to expand services provided by Florida Department of Health-contracted pregnancy support centers to give assistance for new parents such as clothing, car seats and diapers and counseling. The bill provides no funding for the expansion of services. However, the Senate version includes $25 million in recurring funding for those services and $5 million in recurring funding for family planning services such as contraception and counseling.
Should the proposal end up on his desk after the lawmaking session concludes in May, Gov. Ron DeSantis signaled he would support it, although he hasn’t championed the proposal with as much as enthusiasm as his priority proposals such as eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives on college campuses.
“We’re for pro-life. I beg the Legislature to paintings, produce just right stuff, and we can signal,” he said all through a Feb. 1 news convention according to a query about whether or not he would make stronger a six-week ban.
Democrat-proposed amendments fail
Three amendments proposed by Democratic representatives failed during Thursday’s meeting. Orlando Rep. Anna Eskamani, who worked for the reproductive health care practice Planned Parenthood before she was elected, proposed striking the six-week ban portion of the bill altogether, while Reps. Allison Tant and Kelly Skidmore sought narrower changes.
Tant’s amendment would have eliminated a requirement that a second physician sign off on an abortion in the event that a pregnancy would cause death or serious injury to the mother. The bill does allow one physician to sign off if a second isn’t available.
Skidmore’s amendment was once aimed on the exception for rape and incest sufferers. That portion of the invoice calls for a pregnant particular person to provide a “restraining order, police record, scientific report, or different courtroom order or documentation offering proof” of the crime. The amendment would have added a sworn statement to that list. Proponents note there are barriers to reporting a rape or incest to police and the legal system.
That amendment sparked emotional testimony from Taylor Aguilar, of Lakeland, who said she got pregnant after a man she was having consensual sex with removed the condom without her permission. By the time she saw a doctor, she was 10 weeks pregnant.
She didn’t report the rape to police, she said, “as a result of she sought after to get as a long way clear of the location as conceivable.”
“I were given the selection” on whether to have an abortion, Aguilar, 28, said, “as a result of in 2015 we didn’t have those restrictions.”
As she left the committee room, she started to cry.
A handful of audio system spoke in desire of the invoice, together with Andrew Shirvell with the pro-life group Florida Voice for the Unborn. Shirvell advised lawmakers to enact a extra excessive model of the invoice, banning the process from the purpose of conception.
“To do the rest lower than complete coverage is cowardly and unacceptable,” Shirvell mentioned.
15-week legal challenge before Florida Supreme Court
A challenge by Planned Parenthood organizations and other groups to Florida’s new 15-week abortion law is now before the Florida Supreme Court, which has set up a schedule for filing briefs and other matters that makes it unlikely that a ruling on that law’s constitutionality comes until well after the Legislature is scheduled to adjourn in May.
Attorneys for the state are expected to ask justices to reverse decades of precedent and rule that Florida’s constitutional right to privacy does not protect abortion rights.
Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper, in ruling the 15-week law unconstitutional last year, relied on the state Supreme Court’s 1989 “T.W.” ruling that overturned a parental consent law for minors seeking abortion, saying it violated that privacy right.
Justices have left the 15-week standard in place while it’s being appealed.
The privacy right states that “each and every herbal particular person has the suitable to be let on my own and unfastened from governmental intrusion.” It was added to the state constitution by voters in 1980.
But last fall, Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office filed briefs with the Supreme Court arguing in favor of retaining the 15-week standard while it was before the court, citing the words used in that privacy right.
“That language is of course learn to restrict governmental snooping and information-gathering — however to not identify a liberty to ruin unborn (or every other) lifestyles,” it said.
During Thursday’s meeting, Democratic Rep. Christine Hunschofsky asked Persons-Mulicka, who co-sponsored last year’s 15-week abortion ban legislation, why she was proposing a change to abortion law while the current limit is being challenged.
The change, Persons-Mulicka said, is that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June, returning abortion access control back to the states.
“I look ahead to observing and listening to how Florida Supreme Court laws,” she mentioned.
USA TODAY Network – Florida Capital Bureau reporter John Kennedy contributed to this record. Kathryn Varn is statewide undertaking reporter for the Gannett/USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida. You can achieve her at [email protected] or (727) 238-5315.