Floridians failed to enshrine abortion access in the state constitution Tuesday, with the majority of the population still failing to clear the 60 percent supermajority requirement for the ballot measure.
The Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion sought to protect an individual’s right to an abortion up to the point of viability, which typically occurs between 23 and 24 weeks of pregnancy. The measure also would have safeguarded the right to an abortion in the event that the procedure is deemed medically necessary in order to preserve a pregnant person’s health.
But the initiative faced dire odds: in order to be amended into the state constitution, it needed more than a simple majority of voters in order to succeed, effectively handing the minority of Floridians the ability to decide the fate of women in the conservative hub.
More than 5,600,000 Floridians voted in favor of Amendment 4—approximately 57.2 percent—with 82 percent of the expected votes in, according to a projection by NBC News.
Just one week out from Election Day, pollsters predicted that the pro-abortion effort would go south. A survey from St. Pete Polls of 1,227 likely Florida general election voters, conducted for FloridaPolitics.com, suggested that the measure would fall just shy of its goal with 54 percent of the vote.
Florida has one of the most prohibitive abortion policies in the nation, restricting access after just six weeks. That law, signed by Governor Ron DeSantis during his campaign for president, went into effect in May. DeSantis’s decision was viewed as a strategic move that could have proved popular with some voters in swing states such as Iowa, but that bid fell apart when DeSantis announced in January that he would be withdrawing from the race—leaving Floridians holding the bag.
As such, Florida’s law prohibits abortions well before a lot of people even realize they’re pregnant, and just one week before drug store pregnancy tests can detect pregnancy hormones in their earliest, and least reliable, window. It has also forced some patients in need of the procedure to seek treatment outside the state—such as in North Carolina, where abortion is banned after 12 weeks—or even further afield.
In the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion efforts have won in every state where the issue has appeared on the ballot. Florida is one of 10 states that put that metric to the test this year, though it is the only state that requires more than a simple majority to pass.
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