TALLAHASSEE, Florida (LifeSiteNews) — Pro-abortion activists are still more than a quarter of a million signatures short of the threshold they need to collect by February to get a proposed constitutional amendment that would embed abortion-on-demand into the Florida Constitution on the November 2024 ballot.
A coalition of left-wing and pro-abortion groups called “Floridians Protecting Freedom” (FPF) is seeking to put before voters in November 2024 a state constitutional amendment declaring that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider”; with an exception for an existing provision of the constitution that permits parental notification for minors’ abortions.
In order to get the amendment on next year’s ballot, supporters must collect 891,523 valid signatures, from 14 of the state’s 28 congressional districts, to be verified by February 1. According to the Florida Division of Elections, supporters have gathered 621,664 so far, leaving them 269,859 short.
To keep the abortion lobby from making up the difference, state pro-life group Florida Voice for the Unborn has made December 2 a “Decline to Sign Day of Action,” during which pro-lifers are “making a concerted effort to distribute our effective, double-sided ‘Decline to Sign Awareness Cards’ and other materials to their fellow Floridians in communities throughout Florida.”
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At the campaign’s web page, pro-lifers can find a wide variety of resources, including the text of the amendment, flyers and awareness cards to print and hand out, state signature tracking and campaign finance activity, and sign-up forms to share pro-life activity, join prayer groups, and report locations where pro-abortion signatures are being gathered.
The awareness cards stress that the amendment would mandate unlimited abortion-on-demand, including partial-birth abortion, end parental consent and “reasonable protections” for women’s health, and encourage growth of the abortion industry.
“The fact is, the pro-abortion petition initiative is failing big time,” said Florida Voice for the Unborn executive director Andrew Shirvell. “Under Florida law, after January 1, 2024, each county supervisor of elections may – but is not required to – verify signatures received (in-person or via the U.S. mail) during the month of January […] The practical effect of that statute is that the pro-abortion petition gatherers need to get their petitions into the local county supervisor of elections offices by December 31, 2023 in order to guarantee that all of their petitions will be counted and verified by February 1, 2024! Thus, the pro-abortion petition initiative is in dire straits due, in large part, to the significant pushback it has been receiving from Florida Voice for the Unborn and our partner pro-life grassroots organizations.”
Shirvell expressed hope that the campaign will “place the final nail in the coffin of the fading, evil pro-abortion constitutional amendment petition drive, which has been losing significant momentum since early September” and that if pro-lifers “continue to work hard,” then the “LORD will grant Florida’s unborn children a stunning VICTORY on February 1st, which will serve as the catalyst necessary for the Legislature and Governor Ron DeSantis to finally ‘Make Florida TOTALLY abortion free’ by enacting complete legal protections for unborn children, beginning at conception!”
Volunteer efforts are not the only threat to the pro-abortion amendment. In October, Florida’s Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody asked the Florida Supreme Court to reject it on the grounds that its language about “viability” is unclear and therefore “does not satisfy the legal requirements for ballot placement.” The amendment’s backers filed opposing briefs the following month; the state’s highest court has not yet ruled on the matter.
Fourteen states currently ban all or most abortions, with available data so far indicating that pro-life laws made enforceable by the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in June 2022 could effectively wipe out an estimated 200,000 or more abortions a year.
In response, abortion supporters pursue a variety of tactics to preserve abortion “access,” such as easy access to abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, and making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors.
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Arguably their most successful tactic has been working to attempt to embed “rights” to abortion in state constitutions, which effectively insulates abortion-on-demand from future state legislation and could only be overridden by a federal abortion ban. Since the 2022 midterm elections, such efforts have succeeded in Vermont, California, Michigan, and most recently Ohio, and are also being attempted in Maryland. Last month, a judge struck down one such amendment in Nevada for violating the legal requirement that potential amendments only cover one subject at a time.
The disheartening trend has prompted much conversation among pro-lifers about the need to develop new strategies to protect life at the ballot box.