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The state of Florida may be getting pummelled by hurricanes, but Ronald Dion DeSantis had another thing on his mind last week — going after television stations for airing ads encouraging people to vote for the abortion amendment on this year’s ballot.
DeSantis, it seems, deployed the general counsel of the Florida Department of Health to write a letter to the general manager of WFLA-TV, the NBC affiliate station in Tampa, demanding that they take the ad down, claiming that it is a “violation of state law.”
The ad in question features the testimony of Caroline, a woman who was diagnosed with brain cancer while pregnant with her second child.
“The doctors knew if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom,” she explained, adding, “Florida has now banned abortion even in cases like mine.”
The letter from the Department of Health claims that this is “categorically false” and that women can have abortions for health- and life-related reasons — ignoring the fact that the issue is that there is no clear guidance for doctors on when they are allowed to make that call.
“Women faced with pregnancy complications posing a serious risk of death or substantial and irreversible physical impairment may and should seek medical treatment in Florida,” Department of Health general counsel Jack Wilson wrote in the letter, adding, “However, if they are led to believe that such treatment is unavailable under Florida law, such women could foreseeably travel out of state to seek emergency medical care, seek emergency medical care from unlicensed providers in Florida, or not seek emergency medical care at all. Such actions would threaten or impair the health and lives of these women.”
The Department of Health warned the station that unless they take the ad down in the next 24 hours, the state will begin legal proceedings against them in order to force them to do so.
The fact is, there can never really be any real “guidance” on this issue while doctors risk imprisonment, fines, and the loss of their medical license for making a decision the state of Florida may not agree with. The stakes are just too high and there is literally no reason at all to trust the state of Florida with something like this. That is why these are decisions that need to be made between a patient and their doctor, not a patient, their doctor, and the governor of Florida.
Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group running the ad, sent its own letter to WFLA-TV, pointing out that the First Amendment “forbids a public official to attempt to suppress the protected speech of private persons by threatening that legal sanctions will at [their] urging be imposed unless there is compliance with [their] demands.”
They also explained that the ad was entirely accurate and that, unfortunately, Caroline (who, mind you, was telling her own personal story) would be barred from getting an abortion in the state.
Florida regulations provide very limited guidance regarding the exceptions and the only instances where the Agency for Health Care Administration has provided guidance that abortions are permitted after six-weeks’ gestation are when there is an immediate threat to the pregnant person’s life: Preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM), ectopic pregnancy, and molar pregnancy […]. None of these enumerated exceptions would have applied in Caroline’s case.
Moreover, Caroline’s diagnosis was terminal. Practically, that means that an abortion would not have saved her life, only extended it. Florida law would not allow an abortion in this instance because the abortion would not have “save[d] the pregnant woman’s life,” only extended her life.
Again, this is why these are decisions that need to be made between patient and doctor with no interference from the state. Politicians are not doctors and even doctors cannot predict every possible instance in which an abortion is going to be medically necessary or specify a specific point at which one can give the “all clear” signal. That’s just not how anything works.
Ron DeSantis clearly wants to keep people from finding out about how bad and dangerous the law actually is so that they do not rush to the polls and vote to support the abortion amendment, for fear something similar could happen to them or someone they love.
But the fact is, these stories absolutely are going to come out, whether or not they are aired in a political ad, because they are actually happening to real people — who are under no obligation whatsoever to keep silent about their experiences in order to placate Ron DeSantis and friends.
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