DeSantis signs six week abortion ban
Stranger things have happend besides Donald Trump’s presidency and Demogorgons. So, it would be unwise to predict that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed away his Oval Office aspirations last night. But then, it’s Ron DeSantis (Washington Post):
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signeda bill Thursdaythat would ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, after the legislature passed the bill earlier in the day. The measure cuts off what has become a critical access point for abortion care in the South since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
DeSantis signed the bill late at night and released a photo just after 11 p.m. — a sharp contrast to how he celebrated a 15-week ban on abortion last spring with speeches and live media coverage at a church. The quiet passage underscored DeSantis’s reluctance to talk about the bill as he tours the country touting other legislative achievements.
DeSantis is giving the GOP’s rabid primary voters the Handmaid’s Tale America they demand while making as little public show about it in front of non-MAGA general election voters. Quite a high-wire act to perform in white rubber boots.
Driving the shift from 15 to six weeks is the increase in Florida’s abortion tourism in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Roe decision last June. The Post reports, “Over 82,000 people got abortions in Florida in 2022, more than almost any other state. Nearly 7,000 of those traveled to Florida from other states, a 38 percent increase from the year before.”
“If people from Florida are now going to be flooding into the Carolinas and Illinois … that is taking spots that Alabamians and Mississippians need right now,” said Robin Marty, director of operations at West Alabama Women’s Center, a clinic that provided abortions before Roe was overturned. “That’s a crisis that’s going to ripple all across the entire country.”
The bill will take effect 30 days after one of a few scenarios occurs — most likely, 30 days after the state Supreme Court issues a decision on the constitutionality of the 15-week ban that is already in effect. That decision is expected within the coming months.
Florida’s new law comes in the wake of polling showing that legal medication abortion, also under threat, is supported by Americans by over two-to-one and by 71% of women under 30.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) worried aloud to CNN this week that abortion is “an issue that Republicans have been largely on the wrong side of.” Axios reports, “Top Republicans are in a state of paralysis over abortion, watching — with one eye on the 2024 ballot box — as a cascade of new restrictions threaten to dig the party into a political hole.”
At the bottom of that hole is Ron DeSantis, Republican governor of the state where freedom goes to die. DeSantis and GOP legislators in Tallahassee, the Post’s Editorial Board writes, are “waging frontal assaults on press freedom, reproductive freedom, free enterprise and academic freedom.” In their spare time, they are scaling back gun safety rules and continuing attacks on undocumented immigrants.
Were he leading a foreign country during the Cold War, DeSantis would be considered enough of a threat to U.S. security for the Penatgon and the CIA to draft contingencies for ending his rule.
For voters who haven’t been keeping up, the Post’s Editorial Board presents a bill of particulars against DeSantis detailing his assaults on freedom of the press, on women’s bodily autonomy, on free enterprise, on public education, and on undocumented immigrants. Some of those DeSantis attacks he obscures behind acronyms like ESG, CRT, DEI and CBDC. Non-MAGA voters might need a glossary to identify them as his pretext for a introducing a new fascist order.
“If the bullying coming out of Tallahassee is an indication of what [DeSantis] means, we think most Americans won’t want what he is offering,” the Board concludes.
Yes, but that’s what we thought when Trump rode down his golden elevator. Florida’s new abortion ban might be the final nail in DeSantis’ presidential aspirations. That may depend on where El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago spends the 2024 primary season. His numbers are sinking faster than Florida beachfront property.