Forgive me if I join the victory lap of those who applaud Friday's Florida Supreme Court decision to temporarily block a state requirement that made women wait 24 hours before having an abortion.
Or, don't forgive me. I can live with that. I remain a proud, card-carrying member of the RMC, Republican Majority for Choice. We're thousands strong across America -- old-school conservatives who believe like Barry Goldwater that government doesn't belong in the boardroom or the bedroom.
So, you bet I'm celebrating today. My only regret is that the justices' 5-2 decision only holds until, and if, it decides whether to hear an ACLU lawsuit claiming the law is unconstitutional. My hopes are up, nevertheless.
I've made no secret of my disdain for Rep. Jennifer Sullivan's busybody bill the Legislature passed and the governor signed in 2015. I was there the dark day Sullivan stood before a House committee and told members HB 633 would "empower" women. I nearly choked on my coffee.
Make no mistake, this was a law passed to demean women, to punish women, to shame women -- certainly not to empower them.
The only people this law empowered were the ones who believe they should interfere in a pregnant woman's very personal, very private decision. It carved out interference by family members, friends, boyfriends, clergy, buttinskis of every description, activists who never met the woman in their lives -- as a "right" under Florida law -- to get in her face one more time.
Under this law, even though a woman had already received state-mandated counseling, even though she had made a deliberate and fully informed decision, she was forced to wait 24 hours before having the abortion she wanted. That was and is patently wrong.
We're talking about women who had already made the decision. Why should they be forced by legislators in Tallahassee to make two separate trips, 24 hours apart, before having the procedure? It added expense, medical risk and in some parts of Florida, it meant as much as 400 miles and eight hours of travel.
I hold that doctors and patients, not politicians, should determine the course of medical treatment, even when the treatment is abortion. I wrote two pieces of commentary on that subject in 2015, here and here, obviously to no real effect.
I know that to many of my friends, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and the Florida Supreme Court are fightin' words. But I'll tell you what I told them: I've been fighting all my adult life for a woman's right to choose. Choice isn't a political issue and the government shouldn't be in the business of legislating private behavior or personal medical decisions. Period.
I agree with Planned Parenthood all the way on this law. The reasons women decide to have an abortion are complicated, but implicit in this flawed legislation is the unfounded assumption that women who decide to have an abortion don’t carefully consider their decision first. Of course they do.
And by making the process more difficult, we have blocked access to safe medical care for political, and not medical reasons.
This law is all part of a coordinated, national strategy to end access to safe, legal abortion. I'm sure of it.
In the first three months of 2015, state legislators nationwide introduced 332 bills seeking to restrict access to abortion, 53 of which had been approved by legislatures and nine of which had been enacted by April 1. That's according to the Guttmacher Institute, an organization that keeps track of all this.
Maybe I'm still living in the Sixties, when the Republican Party stood for personal responsibility, and the sanctity of a woman's right to choose was nonpartisan. I still believe in those earlier Republican principles. Days like Friday, days that produce a small victory in holding onto those beliefs, are increasingly rare. So, yes, you will find me today celebrating something else very rare for me -- a Florida Supreme Court decision.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
