Legislation that critics believe would have restricted in vitro fertilization in Florida hit a dead-end Monday, but national Democrats are erecting billboards to remind Floridians how Republicans want to keep rolling back reproductive rights.
Billboards in English and Spanish are going up today in Miami, Orlando, Tallahassee and Tampa and will remain through Thursday. They show former President Donald Trump bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade. That's the court decision that had allowed abortion until the 24th week of pregnancy for nearly 50 years. The billboards also hit on the chaos that overturning that right has unleashed. Notably, last week, the Alabama State Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are legally children.
The decision has shut down fertility clinics throughout Alabama in recent days.
"Is Florida next?" the billboard asks.
The billboards are going up in battleground states throughout the country, according to a DNC spokesperson. Orlando is getting two of them.
In vitro fertilization has been an accepted medical procedure since the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in 1978. Still, there are plenty of advances that Republicans, led by the former President, would put in the past, the billboard suggests.
"Donald Trump is the reason why cruel abortion bans across the country are ripping away women's reproductive freedom and threatening access to IVF for Americans trying to start a family," Rhyan Lake, a Democratic National Committee spokeswoman, said in a prepared statement. "Trump is proudly responsible for appointing the three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and wants to go even further by banning abortion nationwide."
Returns at the ballot box have shown, so far, that Americans support the women's right to an abortion. And Florida voters could have their turn to make the right to an abortion a part of the state constitution in November. It would trump state legislation passed last year that would ban abortion before most women know they are pregnant, depending on how the state Supreme Court rules on privacy language in the state constitution.
And many believe that a bill (SB 476) that Republican Sen. Erin Grall proposed represented an attempt to nullify any ballot-box effort to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Polls show most Floridians agree that abortion should remain legal, but the legislation would give "personhood" status to fetuses in civil liability. It raised the specter that a woman could be sued by her rapist for ending a pregnancy resulting from a rape, or a doctor at risk for being sued for performing an abortion.
The concerns over the personhood provision became more acute when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last week that embryos were people under that state's constitution.
"This is a backdoor attempt at personhood," Democratic Senate Leader Lauren Book told reporters Monday. "Any time you start talking about personhood, IVF is on the table."
Grall, however, postponed a vote in front of the Senate Rules Committee on Monday.
The Committee isn't scheduled to meet again this Session, so it's likely the end of its consideration for now.
"Although I have worked diligently to respond to questions and concerns, I understand there is still work that needs to be done," Grall said in a released statement. "It is important we get the policy right with an issue of this significance."
But danger still looms across the country, according to a statement from the DNC's Lake: "Americans are sickened by Trump and MAGA Republicans' attacks on their right to make their own decisions for their families, and voters across the country know that these freedoms are on the ballot this November."
No comments:
Post a Comment