Florida’s six-week ban will disproportionately harm Black Americans. Voters will be able to change that in November

“These bans really impact people of color, the LGBT community, people with disabilities and Latinos,” said Lupe M. Rodríguez, executive director of the National Latino Reproductive Justice Institute.

After Florida passed certainly one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans earlier this week, lawmakers and advocates are decrying the way it will disproportionately harm Black and brown Americans. However, the last word fate of the ban rests in the hands of voters in November.

On Monday, the majority-conservative Florida Supreme Court voted to uphold the state’s 15-week abortion ban, which Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law in 2022. The bill also would cause a six-week abortion ban, which DeSantis signed last yr, to go into effect next yr month.

The abortion ban would prohibit doctors from terminating pregnancies after six weeks of pregnancy. However, if the pregnancy is life-threatening, doctors may terminate it to save the person’s life. The ban doesn’t apply to cases involving fetal defects, incest or rape.

Lupe M. Rodríguez, executive director of the National Institute for Reproductive Justice in Latin America, told the each day Grio that she was “outraged” by the court’s decision. She said the Florida government puts “politics over health.”

“These bans really impact people of color, the LGBT community, people with disabilities and Latinos,” Rodríguez added.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that most girls discover about their pregnancy shortly after the fifth week of pregnancy. However, other aspects can delay detection by weeks, equivalent to being pregnant on the mistaken time, income status, or lack of education.

Jennifer Driver, senior director of reproductive rights on the State Innovation Exchange, where she chairs the Reproductive Freedom Leadership Council, told the Grio that bans like Florida’s reflect “far-right ideology” and ignore the desires of individuals in the state.

On Monday, in a separate decision, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that voters would have the chance to vote on a November decision that could overturn a six-week abortion ban.

Appearing on the ballot will be Amendment 4, or the “Amendment to Limit Government Interference in Abortion,” which will state: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary for the protection health of the patient, as determined by the Commission, the entity providing health care to the patient.” Driver said she is optimistic that voters can overturn the six-week abortion law.

“In every state that has had a ballot initiative to protect abortion rights, voters have shown up and voted for reproductive freedom,” Driver noted.

“Even though states like Florida are Republican-led, we know that the overwhelming majority are coming to the polls to protect abortion rights,” she said.

In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which gave states exclusive authority to set their very own abortion laws. In recent years, Republican-led states equivalent to Florida, Alabama, Texas, Georgia, Idaho, Tennessee and Mississippi have enacted a number of the hardest laws in the country.

Rodríguez, of the Latino National Institute for Reproductive Justice, said many Republican-led U.S. states have enacted abortion bans due to “politicians who are out of touch with their population.”

“Many of these states have been plagued by decades of territorial manipulation that have weakened the political power of communities in these states… leading to abortion bans that the majority of the population does not support,” Rodríguez said.

The Driver of State Innovation Exchange said anti-abortion states lack “the representation that is needed in the legislature to enact abortion protections.”

“Instead, these states allow anti-abortion legislatures to exert control over the people they rule,” Driver said.

Although Florida has a 15-week abortion ban, the Guttmacher Institute found that in 2023, greater than 9,000 pregnant women living in neighboring states equivalent to Texas, Mississippi and Georgia – which have total or near total abortion bans – traveled to the Sunshine State to terminate their pregnancies.

But that will soon end next month when Florida’s six-week abortion ban goes into effect.

Experts say people from marginalized communities living in Florida and neighboring states will be most impacted by this laws. They will bear the financial burden of traveling to other parts of the country to receive abortion care.

A State Innovation Exchange driver told TheGrio that Florida “was the hub where Southerners could get abortion care.”

She added that people will now have to travel to North Carolina and Virginia to obtain abortions. But it will have devastating consequences for “people struggling to make ends meet, immigrants, young people, and mostly Black and brown people in the South.”

Rodríguez, of the Latino National Institute for Reproductive Justice, told TheGrio that people from marginalized communities will face barriers when trying to find “child care, money for travel and planning free time.”

“For most people who are trying to make ends meet, it’s going to be difficult,” Rodríguez said.

Despite the challenges marginalized communities currently face, Rodríguez believes there’s a glimmer of hope for voters who could have the ultimate say in November on whether to uphold the abortion ban.

!function(){var g=window;g.googletag=g.googletag||{},g.googletag.cmd=g.googletag.cmd||(),g.googletag.cmd.push(function(){ g.googletag.pubads().setTargeting(“has-recommended-video”,”true”)})}();var _bp=_bp||();_bp.push({“div”:”Brid_559374″, “obj”:{“id”:”41122″,”width”:”1280″,”height”:”720″,”stickyDirection”:”below”,”video”:”559374″,”slide_inposition”:” .widget_tpd_ad_widget_sticky”}});

Featured Stories

Florida’s six-week ban will disproportionately harm Black Americans. Voters could change that by appearing first on TheGrio in November.