State supreme court last month cleared the way for the ‘awful’ ban, but also allowed November ballot measure for abortion
A six-week abortion ban went into effect on Wednesday in Florida, cutting off access to the procedure before many people know they are pregnant and leveling the south-eastern United States’ last stronghold for abortion rights.
The ban went into force weeks after Florida’s state supreme court issued a decision clearing the way for it to take effect. Strict bans now blanket all of the American deep south, increasing the strain on the country’s remaining clinics. The closest clinic for most Floridians past six weeks of pregnancy is now several states away in North Carolina, which outlaws abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy.
In a speech in Jacksonville, Florida, on Wednesday, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, lamented that “as of this morning, 4 million women in this state woke up with fewer reproductive freedoms than they had last night.
“This is a fight for freedom – the fundamental freedom to make decisions about one’s own body and not have their government tell them what they’re supposed to do.”
Harris, who has become the Biden campaign’s foremost messenger on abortion, continued: “Starting this morning, women in Florida became subject to an abortion ban so extreme it applies before many women even know they are pregnant. Which, by the way, tells us the extremists who wrote this ban either don’t know how a woman’s body works or they simply don’t care.”
Last year, Florida abortion providers performed more than 84,000 abortions, state data found – including more than 9,000 for out-of-state patients, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion restrictions.
