Fla. Republicans ditch Texas-style abortion law for what they call a 'generous' 15-week ban, drawing

Source: Washington Post

Fla. Republicans ditch Texas-style abortion law for what they call a ‘generous’ 15-week ban, drawing criticism from all sides

The approach, seen as an emerging GOP strategy to prepare voters for a post-Roe world, has prompted rare denunciations from the right of Gov. Ron DeSantis

By Caroline Kitchener
Yesterday at 5:00 a.m. EST

TALLAHASSEE — It took just one day after Texas enacted its controversial “heartbeat bill,” banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, for a top Florida Republican to endorse passing the same law in his state — with the leader of the state Senate declaring that a similar measure was “something we’re already working on.”

But by the time the measure was introduced in September, drawing national headlines as the first Texas copycat ban to emerge nationwide, Florida GOP leaders effectively shrugged it off.

Even Gov. Ron DeSantis, a rising hero on the right for his unapologetic opposition to coronavirus restrictions, said he hadn’t read enough about the Texas ban to comment. His staff went further. Pointing to the novel enforcement mechanism that allowed citizen watchdogs to sue anyone involved in facilitating abortion access after the legal limit, they said DeSantis “didn’t want to turn private citizens against each other.”

Four months later, Florida Republicans have coalesced around a bill they have come to describe as “very reasonable” and “generous” — a 15-week ban modeled after the Mississippi law in the U.S. Supreme Court case that will determine the future of Roe v. Wade. It’s an approach, they say, that would prevent only a fraction of the more than 70,000 abortions performed in Florida each year, the vast majority of which take place in the first trimester.

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Read more: https://wapo.st/3J95a6O

Original WaPo link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/07/abortion-ban-florida-texas-roe-supreme-court/