Is the Twitter feedback part operating Florida’s authorized division nowadays? Has state AG Ashley Moody merely wandered off in disgrace after one too many spankings by the hands of the federal judiciary? What even is that this shit?
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration has tried a number of stratagems to bitter the general public on Modification 4, a poll referendum which might enshrine the appropriate to an abortion within the state’s structure. Now Well being Division Common Counsel John Wilson is threatening felony penalties for a Gainesville tv station if it doesn’t pull an advert supporting the state’s abortion referendum off the air.
The spot includes a Florida girl named Caroline who was recognized with terminal mind most cancers when she was 20 weeks pregnant.
“The medical doctors knew if I didn’t finish my being pregnant, I’d lose my child, I’d lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mother. Florida has now banned abortion even in circumstances like mine,” she stated.
In accordance with Florida well being officers, this spot is a “sanitary nuisance” below the Florida Clear Air Act, which imposes on the DOH the obligation to order the remediation of sanitary nuisances similar to “air pollution, gases, and noisome odors,” “improperly constructed or maintained septic tanks, water closets, or privies,” “any situation able to breeding flies, mosquitoes, or different arthropods,” or “the holding, sustaining, propagation, existence, or permission of something, by a person, municipality, group, or company, by which the well being or lifetime of a person, or the well being or lives of people, could also be threatened or impaired, or by which or via which, instantly or not directly, illness could also be prompted.”
Apparently the video of this girl describing her personal experiences falls into that final class.
Ladies confronted with being pregnant issues posing a severe threat of loss of life or substantial and irreversible bodily impairment could and may search medical remedy in Florida. Nonetheless, if they’re led to consider that such remedy is unavailable below Florida regulation, such girls might foreseeably journey out of state to hunt emergency medical care, search emergency medical care from unlicensed suppliers in Florida, or not search emergency medical care in any respect. Such actions would threaten or impair the well being and lives of those girls.
BREAKING: Disaster being pregnant facilities are unlawful now.
The Elias Regulation Group, which represents Floridians Defending Freedom, the group which positioned the advert, responded with its personal letter to the station, printed by Florida Politics, calling the DOH’s risk “a textbook instance of presidency coercion that violates the First Modification” and “a flagrant abuse of energy.”
The letter additionally notes that nothing within the advert was false. Florida’s six-week ban does have an exception to protect the mom’s life, however with a terminal analysis, Caroline wouldn’t have certified.
“Virtually, that implies that an abortion wouldn’t have saved her life, solely prolonged it,” FPF’s legal professionals wrote. “Florida regulation wouldn’t enable an abortion on this occasion as a result of the abortion wouldn’t have ‘save[d] the pregnant girl’s life,’ solely prolonged her life.”
In the meantime, DeSantis is utilizing taxpayer funds to run advertisements falsely claiming that the modification, which enshrines the appropriate to a pre-viability abortion, would decontrol abortion care and override parental consent legal guidelines.
“What’s going to occur is that may create quite a lot of bootleg abortion clinics across the state,” he stated final month. In fact, he additionally stated that Florida is a shining beacon of free speech, so … take that one with an enormous grain of salt.
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore the place she produces the Regulation and Chaos substack and podcast.
