Fact-checking the media on Florida
After major state Supreme Court decisions on abortion, misinformation is running wild
In dual decisions issued Monday, the Florida Supreme Court delivered a victory for life – and significantly raised the stakes of the November election. (Read our statement here.) The Court reversed a 35-year-old precedent that had interpreted the state constitution to include a “right” to abortion, paving the way for the state’s protections for babies with heartbeats to take effect on May 1. This was a huge win for Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed 15-week protections, was re-elected by nearly 20 points and came back with a 62% voter mandate for heartbeat protections in 2023.
But at the same time, the Court allowed Prop 4, the proposed constitutional amendment to enshrine all-trimester abortion, to appear on the November ballot.
Predictably, media misinformation is running wild. Today we tackle some of the worst offenders.
❌ Florida’s Heartbeat Protection Act will cause the “largest public health crisis” since Dobbs.
This breathless headline comes courtesy of CNN and Lauren Brenzel, the campaign director for the pro-abortion initiative and a longtime Planned Parenthood organizer. Brenzel, for what it is worth, earned her degrees in sociology, not in medicine or public health, according to LinkedIn.
Florida’s Heartbeat Protection Act contains no fewer than five exceptions – danger to the life of the mother, fatal prenatal diagnosis, rape, incest, and a human trafficking provision that as far as we know is unique to this state.
Florida is also one of the few states that report reasons for abortions. Here is the breakdown for the 84,052 abortions reported in 2023, from the state Agency for Health Care Administration:
Elective abortions – 59,901 (71%).
Social or economic reasons – 19,606 (23%).
Mother’s emotional/psychological health – 2,325 (3%).
Mother’s physical health (non-life-endangering) – 1,334 (2%).
Life-endangering physical condition – 251 (0.3%).
Baby believed to have a “serious” disability – 374 (0.4%).
Baby believed to have a “fatal” disability – 141 (0.2%).
Rape – 107 (0.1%).
Incest – 11.
Victim of human trafficking – 2.
These data are pretty consistent for all states that report. Given all of this information, it is unclear how exactly this “public health crisis” would come about.
❌ Six weeks is “before many women know they are pregnant.”
Not according to the CDC’s National Survey of Family Growth. A 2017 study examining this data found that the average time of pregnancy awareness was 5.5 weeks’ gestation.
More to the “heart” of the issue, we know that the human heart is beating by six weeks – a universal vital sign of life. (Thanks to modern technology, we can even watch that tiny heart beating on video.)
Even Planned Parenthood used to acknowledge this, before Democratic darling Stacey Abrams promoted the bizarre conspiracy theory that the sound of a heartbeat at six weeks is “manufactured” by men.
Protecting children with beating hearts is the humane thing and the right thing to do and an opportunity to love both mother and child.
❌ Florida’s ballot measure only allows abortion “up to viability.”
Wrong again. The language of the ballot measure reads (emphasis added):
No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.
[Note: Florida law currently requires parental consent, not just notification.]
As we have covered extensively, for 50 years, the term health meant whatever the abortionist profiting from the abortion decided it meant: “all factors–physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age–relevant to the well-being of the patient,” as the Supreme Court put it in Doe v. Bolton. After Dobbs, even this expansive definition has been replaced with…nothing. In Ohio last year, abortion supporters outright admitted that their amendment intentionally left health undefined.
And the “healthcare provider,” a.k.a. the abortionist? He or she need not even be a doctor:
As Dr. Mary O’Sullivan, a retired director of maternal fetal medicine for the University of Miami, has written, under the amendment, “‘healthcare provider’ does not have to be a doctor or have relevant medical expertise” to practice abortions. “That’s because the amendment doesn’t define the term, and depending on which Florida statute you read, health care providers include anything from podiatrists, optometrists, chiropractors and nurses to physical trainers and acupuncturists.”
❌ Republicans seek to impose a “national abortion ban.”
Americans are not fond of banning things, generally – think New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and large sodas.
Pro-abortion Democrats know this and think they can capitalize on such poll-tested, consultant-approved messaging. But a “ban” by definition is a prohibition, full stop.
For example, smoking is banned on domestic airline flights in the U.S., no exceptions. Imagine if smoking were permitted for the first 20 minutes of every 90-minute flight, and the press called it a “ban.” Wouldn’t that be absurd?
The same is true of limits on abortion – especially cruel late-term abortions at a point when babies feel pain and receive anesthesia as part of standard care during fetal surgery. Decades worth of polling, before and after Dobbs, has found that Americans overwhelmingly oppose abortion in the second and third trimesters. On the international scene, 47 of 50 European nations have abortion limits that are less liberal than, say, California or New York.
❌ Abortion is a losing issue for Republicans.
"Abortion consistently boosted Democrats in midterm races and subsequent special elections," claimed The Washington Post. Politico even quoted former Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL): “Abortion is to Republicans what immigration is to Democrats. If they’re talking about it, they’re losing.”
Not true: Every pro-life governor up for re-election in 2022 won – most by large margins. At the federal level, while there are certainly examples of candidates who were unprepared and took the “ostrich strategy,” burying their heads in the sand, others like Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Ted Budd, and Sen. J.D. Vance effectively exposed the extremism of their Democratic opponents and were victorious.
The key for pro-life Republicans is to follow the three Cs: clarity about your stance, compassion for women facing unexpected pregnancies, and contrast with your opponent.
And, of course, don’t behave like an ostrich.
