Advocates for a constitutional amendment to ensure abortion rights in Florida have been on a roll since they announced their campaign a year ago, raising more than $38 million to date with polls showing that the proposal is likely to meet the 60% threshold required for passage.
But there remain more than 100 days before Election Day, and opponents are beginning to organize their campaign to thwart the amendment’s passage.
Last Thursday evening, about 30 people sat spread out among the pews at the New Creation Family Church in St. Petersburg to receive a breakdown on Amendment 4, the constitutional amendment that would bar any state interfence with the right to abortion in Florida up to the point of viability, around 24 weeks’ gestation.
“How do we win? We win by talking about late-term abortions,” said Scott Mahurin, who stood at the pulpit leading the discussion as a volunteer for Do No Harm Florida, one of two political committees created to oppose the proposal.
As he said this, a slide went up on a screen in the church, noting how, per Gallup, majorities in the country oppose second- and especially third-trimester abortions.
Gov. Ron DeSantis also emphasizes late-term abortions in opposing Amendment 4, even though statistics show that, historically, abortions in the third trimester have been few and far between in Florida.
According to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), in 2022, the last year when abortions were legal, 92% of all abortions in Florida were conducted in the first trimester (12 weeks). Only 8% came during the second trimester and none in the third trimester. Late abortions typically occur only in cases of fetal abnormalities or threats to the patients’ lives, according to KFF.
Mahurin has been going to local abortion facilities providing what he labels “sidewalk counseling” throughout the Tampa Bay area for the past 15 years. Since 2017, his full-time job has been working as director of Florida Preborn Rescue.
In his hour-plus presentation, he provided a primer on the political landscape in Florida when it comes to abortion.
“It’s a more devious strategy because in states like Florida, where you have a lot of conservative, pro-life, values voters, if you can’t win an election, what you do is you go around the election and you do petition drives. You get funding from leftwing organizations. From Planned Parenthood,” he said “You get funding from those campaigns, and you go around the voters, and you put in the ballot as a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ … because they know that most people … don’t really look at the amendments that closely.”
Mahurin is right that Floridians who support abortion rights will never win through the GOP-controlled Florida Legislature, which passed a 15-week ban on abortions during the 2022 legislative session and came back in 2023 with the six-week ban.
Democrats in the Legislature have been in the minority for nearly three decades, which is why bills they have proposed to raise the minimum wage and allow medical marijuana languished, even though they were popular with the public. It did take big money to fund campaigns to get those measures on the ballot for the people to vote on, and both measures passed during the past decade.
And polls show that Floridians do not support the six-week abortion law.
A USA Today/Ipsos survey conducted in April showed that 55% of Floridians opposed the six-week law, while only 23% supported it. Electoral wins for abortion rights in other red states such as Kansas and Ohio have conclusively shown that Republicans will not vote in lock step to support such restrictions.
Do No Harm Florida was co-founded by Lynda Bell, who has been president of Florida Right to Life since 1989.
“You have to keep the message very simple — very clear, concise — and help people understand,” she said.
Part of that messaging will entail producing close to 150,000 “rack cards” in English and Spanish for distribution to the public. The cards say that passage of the amendment would allow for “late term abortions,” “removing all protections for women and children” and “eliminating parents’ rights.” They’re beginning to train volunteers to work with an app from Turning Point Action that they can use in canvassing neighborhoods.
Volunteers will soon begin reaching out to Republicans already in the Legislature or running for seats to ask if they’ll come out against Amendment 4. Do No Harm has raised slightly more than $49,000 since being established after the Florida Supreme Court voted in April to place Amendment 4 on the November ballot.
Another, sightly higher-profile political committee formed to oppose Amendment 4 is the No on 4 Campaign (also listed as Florida Voters Against Extremism), created on July 1 and boosted recently with a $1 million contribution from Conservatives for Principled Leadership, House Speaker Paul Renner’s political committee.
A spokesperson for the No on 4 group said it would provide a comment for the Phoenix but never did, instead sending its initial campaign video, labelled “Not What it Seems.”
Both campaigns opposed to the measure intend to sow doubt with voters by seizing on the written text of the amendment, which reads: “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. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”
Critics contend that means somehow that the amendment would eliminate the 2020 law that requires written parental consent before a minor undergoes an abortion, although the law does grant exceptions to parental consent, including a judicial bypass if the patient can demonstrate sufficient maturity.
That’s a “flat out lie,” counters Anna Hockhammer, executive director of the Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition of the opposition’s assertion.
“Amendment 4 is very explicit that it doesn’t change the Legislature’s existing constitutional authorities vis á vis parental rights,” she said.
“We support parental rights. We want parents to be involved in making the health care decisions for their children. I would argue that Amendment 4 gives more power to parents and guardians because it restores the decision making to patients, their families, and their health care teams and their doctors and takes it out of the hands of politicians and government.”
In his presentation, Mahurin also seized on the “healthcare provider” language. He suggests dozens of positions could qualify, including pharmacists, dental hygienists, and school psychologists.
Hockhammer disagrees.
“Amendment 4 does nothing to preclude the state from regulating medical services the way that it does with every other procedure,” she said.
“You don’t go to a dentist to get open heart surgery, and your message therapist isn’t your dermatologist. Nothing in Amendment 4 precludes the state from making sure that competent, trained doctors and other health care professionals are the ones who can provide abortion access.”
Amendment 4 supporters received a blow earlier this week when the members of the state Financial Impact Estimating Conference voted to write an estimate reflecting increased costs to taxpayers should the measure pass in November. The estimate will appear on the ballot this fall.
“Politicians don’t want us to take our power back, so they’re trying to rig the system, because they know in a fair fight, they’ll lose,” said Laura Goodhue, executive director of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, in a statement. “Floridians are fed up with the government meddling where they have no business — from accessing abortion to accessing the ballot.”
Noting the polls, some of which show as much as 69% support the amendment, Hockhammer insists the majority of Floridians support abortion access and dislike “government overreach and extremist politicians.”
Mahurin agrees that most Floridians do not want to ban abortion outright, as has been done in other states following the fall of Roe v. Wade. And he’s concerned that it will take a sustained effort from the anti-abortion movement to secure at least 40% of the vote to stop Amendment 4, which he calls “radical legislation.”
“We’re going to lose unless the pro-life community comes together,” he said. “Unless the churches speak out. Unless the politicians who are running speak out. And the national people speak up. Otherwise, we’re going to lose.”
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and X.
