Florida Senate Republicans approved a bill Monday banning abortions after six weeks, which unless you’re clairvoyant (and you’re not) amounts to a total abortion ban in the not-so-free state of Florida. These ghouls already passed a 15-week abortion ban last April that went into effect in July. It’s not as if there’s been any compelling new discoveries in forced-birth science. A 14-week-old fetus didn’t write the screenplay for Everything Everywhere All At Once.
This new awful abortion ban will disproportionately impact poor people and minorities, and it will not demonstrably improve anyone’s actual life unless they get off on pain and misery.
The Associated Press reports that “a six-week ban would more closely align Florida with the abortion restrictions of other Republican-controlled states and give [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis a political win on an issue important with GOP primary voters ahead of his potential White House run.”
That’s a cynical way of framing this news. It also fails to mention that extremist abortion bans are incredibly unpopular and likely cost Republicans gubernatorial and Senate seats last year. However, that’s cold comfort for the Floridians who just received a change of address to Gilead.
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The six-week abortion ban passed the same day DeSantis signed an equally life-affirming bill that would let residents carry a concealed weapon in public without a permit, training, or background check. Life is, after all, a precious gift we must be prepared to snuff out at any moment over a parking dispute.
DeSantis has also expressed support for permitless open carry, because the alligators and humidity aren’t enough to keep people away from the state. DeSantis has to make it a Wild West theme park where the guns don’t shoot blanks.
“Bodily autonomy should not give a person the permission to kill an innocent human being. We live in a time where the consequences of our actions are an afterthought and convenience has been substitution for responsibility, and this is unacceptable when it comes to the protection of the most vulnerable,” said Sen. Erin Grall, a Republican who sponsored the bill. Oh, wait … she’s not talking about the reckless gun bill that she sponsored, but the horrible six-week abortion ban she sponsored.
In 2019, when Grall was a state House rep, she introduced a bill allowing for licensed concealed carry on church grounds. You wish this was parody.
There’s so much bad law in Florida you don’t know where to start protesting. Fortunately, Florida has a simple solution. The police will just lock your ass up if you even try. The awful abortion ban — the six-week one, not the awful one that already exists — prompted demonstrations at the state capitol in Tallahassee. According to Tallahassee Police, protesters were told that they had to leave after sunset — maybe there’s a problem with vampires — but 11 people refused and were arrested for trespassing.
Among those arrested for violating their fascist-imposed bedtimes were former gubernatorial candidate Nikki Fried, now chair of the Florida Democratic Party, and Lauren Book, Florida’s Senate minority leader.
“I looked at Lauren and said, ‘Is this really happening?’” Fried said. “I was in shock that we were being arrested during a peaceful protest.”
Her white girl shock at white dude terribleness aside, people are often arrested at peaceful protests. It’s how cops make their overtime. Fortunately, DeSantis’s “anti-protest he doesn’t like” law is temporarily blocked, but the Tallahassee Police seem to think they can neutralize the First Amendment once it’s dark out — a sort of free speech “sundown” town.
“TPD encourages individuals exercising their First Amendment right of peaceful assembly to do so in accordance with the law,” the Tallahassee Police Department said. Sunset in Florida Monday night was 7:39 p.m.
Fried tweeted a photo of herself detained by police while in handcuffs. “I’m out,” she wrote. “And not ever backing down. Just fucking vote @FlaDems!!!” That is also the message on her T-shirt.
The state Democratic Party declared, “[Fried] was arrested for defending a woman’s right to choose. Florida Democrats will not back down in our defense of abortion rights. Our Chair made that clear tonight.”
Book tweeted before her own run-in with the cops: “Florida is on a roll today … banning abortions & signing permitless concealed carry into law. Guns are now less regulated than women’s bodies — and it’s easier to get a gun than to receive health care.”
That’s sadly not hyperbole.
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