The Biden-Harris campaign, which seized on Monday’s Florida Supreme Court ruling on the state’s six-week abortion ban set to take effect next month, said they see Florida “certainly in play” for the president, emphasizing that reproductive rights are on the agenda in November. election.
“It’s hard to ignore the electoral implications,” Florida State House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell said in a Biden-Harris campaign call with reporters that PoliticusUSA participated in. “The last time the Democratic presidential candidate won Florida, it was when there was an anti-abortion measure on the ballot. So this is something that Floridians are paying attention to and that was President Barack Obama in 2012. So I’m optimistic that it will cross the finish line in November.”
Obama won Florida in 2012, partly with support from black, Hispanic and younger voters under 30, but it was an uphill battle. And sure enough, there was an abortion measure on the ballot, and it was defeated. That measure would have “prohibited the state from spending public funds on abortions or on health insurance that included abortion coverage.”
The group collecting signatures for the 2024 ballot measure, Floridians Protecting Freedom, collected “more than 1 million signatures and said approximately 150,000 signatories were registered Republican voters.”
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Florida hasn’t been a swing state for a while, but after Roe we’ve seen time and time again abortion freedom on the ballot receive strong support, including a Republican crossover.
“We certainly see Florida in play and unlike Donald Trump, we have multiple paths to 270 that we have been able to keep open,”
Biden-Harris 2024 Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said on the call. “We’ve continued to raise money at the level that we need to, you know, have multiple investments across the country and in key states like Florida, unlike Donald Trump, who doesn’t have the money, he has not that. have the infrastructure and the states are on the ground to enable the coalition to do so.”
“The overwhelming majority of Floridians believe we should all have the freedom to make our own personal health care decisions without government interference and in the effort to collect the number of ballots needed to get this before the Supreme Court ,” says Driskell. said as she explained why she thinks they have a good chance. “To do that, they had to collect more than a million petitions. And it was the Democrats, Republicans and NPAs who signed these petitions.”
Trump is trying to respond to the Democrats’ power behind the overthrow of Roe, for which Trump has taken credit, by resorting to the vague but dog-whistle-filled “states’ rights” argument. Trump, who has been found liable for rape, has said he would support a 15-week abortion ban and said he believes women should be “punished” for undergoing the medical treatment of abortion.
Although Florida’s abortion ban includes exceptions for rape, incest and human trafficking if they are reported to authorities, these crimes have historically been vastly underreported and in certain circumstances can put victims at risk when reporting.
The Florida abortion ban ruling effectively bans abortion in Florida, as most women and girls don’t even know they are pregnant after six weeks, including in the Southeast.
The campaign notes that “more than 17 million women of childbearing age live in Southern states with abortion bans — many of whom currently rely on Florida as an option to access needed care.”
The abortion measure on the ballot in Florida puts pressure on Trump and Republicans in a way that would not have existed without it. But even as we can see the clear electoral advantage for Democrats who support the freedom of women and girls, we cannot forget all those who will suffer and whose choices have been taken away as a result of this Republican ban on abortion healthcare.
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