When lawyers opposing Florida’s 15-week limit on safe, legal abortions arrived at the majestic state Supreme Court building Friday, they knew they faced long odds. This court is stacked with supporters of Gov. Ron DeSantis, and the willingness to trash precedent and ignore the history of Florida’s clear protections for medical privacy were almost certainly used as private litmus tests as DeSantis weighed his high-court picks.

And while it’s normally not a good idea to rely on the questions justices ask at oral arguments to predict how the court might rule, Friday’s comments leave us pretty confident that a majority of the court is willing to play along with the prevailing view that — up until about 14 months ago when Roe v. Wade was overturned — nobody really understood Florida’s constitutional privacy protections.

Ignorance or pretense

That came through loud and clear in the questions Justice John Couriel repeatedly fired at ACLU lawyer Whitney Leigh White last week about the debate in 1980,k when the privacy clause was placed on the ballot. If medical privacy was meant to be covered by the original amendment, “…you’d expect to see groups like Planned Parenthood and Right to Life debating that in 1980,” Couriel said. “How do you explain that?”

The answer to that question is simple: In 1980, access to safe, legal abortion was clearly protected by federal law as well. There was no need for it to come up. But other deeply personal liberties — including protection for LGBTQ+ Floridians — were not nearly as well protected. Backers of the amendment, leery of tying their language to overtly controversial topics, tried to ward off talk about drug use and homosexuality. But news coverage and floor debate made it clear that most Floridians saw the 1980 amendment as expansive, covering personal decisions as well as access to intimate information.