So Gov. Rick Scott signed HB 633, the abortion-waiting-period bill. What else is new? Another year, another opportunity for Florida to shame a woman.
You have to ask yourself, what's next? You know there's going to be a something-next. This bill that mandates a woman terminating her pregnancy make back-to-back visits to the medical clinic within 24 hours 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 this year, 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.
Oh, something else will be coming. It's not enough that a woman have counseling, followed by a sonagram that she pays for and is forced to look at, followed now by the 24-hour waiting period.
One lawmaker suggested to me that the next bill could target doctors. A bill might require doctors performing the surgery to deliver a kind of pre-procedure sermon to each patient, perhaps describe the abortion "realistically." But I don't think that would ever happen. Doctors wouldn't allow it. Unlike a vulnerable pregnant woman, doctors have the power base and the standing to fight back.
Do legislators think about whether they're interfering with the doctor-patient relationship, or if there’s a problem with the woman’s ongoing health? It’s terrifying. And if women were doing this to men, it wouldn’t happen. Or for that matter, if men had babies, it wouldn’t happen.
I admit here and now, I have been an advocate for women’s reproductive rights since before Roe v. Wade, and lest you question my conservative colors, that was during the Sixties, when the Republican Party stood for personal responsibility, and the sanctity of a woman's right to choose was nonpartisan. I don't know if Jennifer Sullivan, R-Mount Dora, who wrote the abortion-waiting-period bill in the House, or Anitere Flores, R-Miami, who filed it in the Senate, ever encountered much objection from old-timey conservatives like me.
I agree with Planned Parenthood all the way on HB 633: The reasons women decide to have an abortion are complicated, but implicit in this flawed bill is the unfounded assumption that women who decide to have an abortion don’t carefully consider their decision. 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.
I shudder to think what legislation lies ahead for women in Florida.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
