The US state of Florida has passed a law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, adding to other places, generally ruled by Republicans, that have restricted or made the procedure more difficult through changes in legislation.
Governor Ron DeSantis, a staunch anti-abortion activist, signed the law into law on Thursday, after the state’s two legislatures passed the text early last month.
The text enters into force on July 1. “This will represent the most significant protection for life that has been enacted in this state in an entire generation,” the governor said shortly before the sanction.
The law only makes exceptions for pregnancies where there is a risk of death to the mother, in cases of “irreversible physical disability” or abnormalities that are fatal to the fetus.
In discussions in the state legislature, republican parliamentarians overturned an amendment that also made an exception for situations in which the pregnancy was the result of rape, incest or human trafficking.
State Senator Kelli Stargel, a supporter of the law, took a stand against the amendment, arguing that a child should not “be killed because of the circumstances in which it was conceived.”
Florida had more lenient legislation compared to nearby states, with the procedure being allowed up to 24 weeks, which prompted women from these locations to travel to have the procedure there. Therefore, the new law should make access to abortion difficult throughout the southeastern region of the United States.
“No one should be forced to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to access basic and essential health care, but by signing this law, Governor DeSantis will force many Florida residents seeking an abortion to do so,” he said in a statement. activist Alexis McGill Johnson, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement.
The US Supreme Court indicated in December last year that it could change its 50-year understanding of the practice, legalized since 1973 by Roe v. Wade, until the time of pregnancy when the fetus was able to survive outside the womb.
Although the trend is that this occurs around 22 weeks of gestation, there is still debate about the period, which in practice opens a gap for states to create laws reducing the period and making the procedure difficult, which has been happening since then.
Mississippi enacted the law with the 15-week rule, also without exception for rape cases, in 2018, but the local justice barred the text, which ended up in the Supreme Court precisely because it contradicted previous decisions on the subject.
The Supreme Court is now composed of a majority of conservative judges, 6 against 3, even with the arrival of the new nominee by President Joe Biden, Ketanji Jackson, because she will occupy the chair of Stephen Breyer, from the most progressive wing of the Court, about to retire.
A change in understanding could make laws like Florida’s constitutional, unchallengeable in court.
Similar bills have also recently been enacted in other states, such as Arizona, Kentucky and West Virginia.
In others, even more prohibitive legislation is being adopted. In Texas, a law is in effect that bans abortion after six weeks’ gestation and still allows those who help women to terminate a pregnancy after that period to be prosecuted. The Idaho Legislature is also in the process of passing a similar law.
On the 5th, the Oklahoma Parliament passed a bill that makes abortion an illegal practice, except in medical emergencies. According to the text, those who carry out the procedure for other reasons can be punished with fines of up to US$ 100 thousand (R$ 465 thousand) and 10 years in prison.
The phenomenon in Oklahoma is similar to what is expected to occur in Florida, as the state had become a destination for women from Texas looking to terminate their pregnancies.
The NGO American Civil Liberties Union of Florida said a privacy clause in the state Constitution would protect a citizen’s life from government “intrusion”, which could serve as a basis for a lawsuit challenging the legality of the new law.
