November’s Second-Most-Important Election Is in Florida

A piece in the New York Times by a "pro-life" advocate rightly calls Florida's abortion referendum perhaps the second most important election next moth.  Sadly, the author fails to grasp that Florida's six week abortion ban is but a part of the white Christian nationalists effort to force their religious beliefs on all Americans. If this element of the GOP/MAGA base successfully defends the Florida ban, gay rights and even contraception are next on the agenda, along with efforts to further restrict the voting non-whites.  Florida has been in the forefront of this forced imposition of Christofascist beliefs on all be it in the form of the abortion ban, "don't say gay" laws and efforts to erase anything this reactionary element deems "woke."  Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis and the Republican controlled legislature have allowed the Florida home insurance framework come to near collapse (it may yet collapse after Hurricanes Helene and Milton) while pushing a culture war agenda.  Ironically, the GOP, Trump and MAGA world bleat incessantly about "freedom" but the ugly reality is that this brand of freedom is only available for some: white, heterosexual male evangelical Christians.  Women, gays, and everyone else have their rights and bodily autonomy subjected to Bronze Age beliefs and and desires for a resurgent white supremacy.  Despite the exceptions in the Florida abortion ban, the law is basically a forced birth law and the children born as a result are then treated as disposable garbage by the political right unless they are white and born into evangelical households.  This reality is anything but "pro-life" - something the author fails or refuses to see.  Here are column excerpts:

I believe that the second-most-important election of 2024 is the Florida contest over Amendment 4, a ballot measure that would enshrine a right to abortion in the Florida Constitution.

The text of the amendment is broad: “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 health care provider.” And it is aimed straight at what I believe to be one of the most reasonable pro-life laws in the nation.

Florida’s Heartbeat Protection Act bans abortions if the gestational age of the fetus is over six weeks, but it also contains exceptions for pregnancies that are a result of rape, incest or human trafficking; for fatal fetal abnormality; and to preserve the life of the mother or “avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.”

Properly interpreted (problems interpreting pro-life laws have tragically led to too many terrible incidents), this is not a law that leaves women vulnerable to dangerous pregnancy complications.

Any electoral collision between pro-life and pro-choice laws is consequential, but this one is far more consequential than most. The pro-life movement is defending a well-drafted law in a red state and confronting an amendment that would largely restore the legal regime that existed before Dobbs.

[T]he deck is also stacked in favor of Florida’s abortion restrictions. In Florida, state constitutional amendments need a 60 percent supermajority to pass, and the DeSantis administration is aggressively opposing the amendment. Too aggressively, in fact. The Florida Department of Health recently sent letters threatening criminal prosecution to television stations it claimed were broadcasting misleading advertisements in favor of Amendment 4.

This was an absurd and dangerous overreach. The answer to a misleading ad isn’t criminal prosecution, but rather a competing ad calling out the misrepresentation.

If the pro-life movement can’t win more than 40 percent of the vote in a red state when its popular governor (he won re-election by more than 19 points) is all-in defending the heartbeat law, then where can it win? And if Donald Trump carries the state while the heartbeat law goes down to defeat, won’t that simply reaffirm the Trump Republican pivot away from defending the unborn?

[I]f Amendment 4 prevails, it will raise a question: Where can the pro-life movement prevail? After its legal victory in the Supreme Court with Dobbs, does it now face a long, slow defeat if pro-life laws fall one by one even in Red America? Will it be reduced to a rump movement, ignored by both national parties and relegated to a desperate defense of the few remaining abortion restrictions in the most deep-red states?

The outcome of the election is uncertain. . . . . a New York Times/Siena College poll indicated that 46 percent of likely Florida voters would vote for Amendment 4, 38 percent would vote against it, and 16 percent were undecided or wouldn’t say how they’ll vote.

Florida is not the only state voting on an abortion-related ballot measure this year. Arizona, Missouri, and South Dakota also face ballot initiatives attempting to overturn abortion restrictions and several other states are voting on measures designed to establish a right to an abortion. But none of those contests are as important, electorally or culturally, as Florida.

The right under Trump had become so vicious that it was losing the ability to win hearts and minds. Its hatred of its enemies contradicts the spirit of love that should animate the argument for life.

No serious pro-life activist thought that overturning Roe would mean that New York or California would suddenly become pro-life. Yet now the pro-life movement is losing in states that it should win, and it’s lost the national Republican Party — at least so long as Trump remains in charge.

Unless popular momentum is reversed, the United States may end up with an abortion regime that is more permissive than when Roe was in effect. Broad ballot measures will have swept away even the modest restrictions that existed under Roe.

There is a certain irony at work. Hard-nosed politics, including the Senate maneuvers that blocked Merrick Garland’s confirmation in the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency while confirming Amy Coney Barrett mere days before the 2020 election, helped create the court that overturned Roe, but that same political aggression is alienating the voters necessary to secure legal protections for the unborn.