This won’t take long.
Know these things:
1) We currently have a right to privacy written as an amendment to our Florida Constitution. It was put there by voters in 1989 by a super-majority. Abortion is safe for now—but it won’t be for long. See #2.
2) Florida is a majority blue state, but has a deep red legislature, an insane authoritarian governor, and unfortunately, the most conservative state supreme court in the nation. With an upcoming retirement, DeSantis will have been able to pick four out of the seven justices. They are quite radical.
3) Asking our elected leaders to protect the rights of our people is a fool’s errand. Yet Democrats aren’t helpless. In Florida, there is only one way to bypass our legislature: citizen’s initiatives—which take the form of constitutional amendments. This method has been employed for the past two decades to save us from the tyranny of the minority.
4) Voters overwhelmingly voted for Fair Districts, to protect minority rights, raise the minimum wage, approve medical marijuana, set aside land rights for conservation, and restore felons’ voting rights. The majority of amendments have come from left-leaning groups that are wildly popular that our right-wing government ignores.
4) There is an amendment we can do right now that I believe will guarantee a Florida women’s right to control her own body.
If Democrats were smart, they’d push for a constitutional amendment that reads something like this
“If abortion is banned by an Act of the Legislature, the state must provide child care, health insurance, tax credits, and paid maternity leave to any citizen denied an abortion who meets or is under the Federal Poverty Level threshold to qualify for Medicaid”
This amendment isn’t about abortion as much as it’s about the welfare of the child the women is being made to carry. The abortion bans they are considering are so radical, there’s no exception for rape, incest or even health of the mother. The very least the Legislature could do is provide a little relief for the mother the State is forcing her to bear.
Of course, this was never about babies or fetuses. This is about control over women. You see, the rich GOP legislators will always have abortion as an option for their daughters, wives, and mistresses. Our neighboring state, Alabama, passed an illegal law that forbade abortion in all cases but made a particular exception for fertility clinics. These clinics destroy thousands of embryos a week. Ever wonder why you don’t see protestors outside these clinics? It’s because the people using them are rich, white women.
The overwhelming majority of Americans support a women’s reproductive freedom by 69%. Here in Florida, the estimate before the Roe reversal was 56%. You need 60% of the vote to pass a constitutional amendment in Florida, and so that’s almost all the way right there to get this passed. I can easily imagine making up the 4% difference with fence-sitters or even some opponents who believe that the GOP is somehow really doing this “for the children.”
I say we call their bluff.