DeSantis Will Continue Legal Fight After Florida Court Strikes Down Abortion Law
Also, more language change by pro-aborts. How ghoulish trying to equate a miscarriage with abortion.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed he will continue the legal battle to keep Florida’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks after a judge struck it down. Of course, the news outlet had to bring up that DeSantis brought up the subject on his own:
“That was likely going to be what was decided in that case. We knew that we were going to have to move forward and continue the legal battle and that’s something that was decided under state law,” DeSantis said.
The governor’s conference was on education but he brought up abortion on his own without prompting.
“It was not of course something you know, that we were happy to see,” DeSantis said. “These are unborn babies that have a heartbeat. They can feel pain, they can suck their thumb and to say that the state constitution mandates things like dismemberment abortions — I just don’t think that’s the proper way.”
Leon County Circuit Judge John C. Cooper ruled the Florida law that bans abortion after 15 weeks. Cooper said it violates the Florida Constitution:
The clause can be found in Section 23 of the state constitution. It reads, in full:
“Every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into the person’s private life except as otherwise provided herein. This section shall not be construed to limit the public’s right of access to public records and meetings as provided by law.”
The Florida Supreme Court first ruled on the issue in October 1989 in the case of a law requiring teenage girls to get a parent’s consent before having an abortion. The 1989 ruling said that the imposition of restrictions on abortion constituted an intrusion into a woman’s personal life.
‘’Florida’s privacy provision is clearly implicated in a woman’s decision of whether or not to continue her pregnancy,’’ the opinion said. ‘’We can conceive of few more personal or private decisions concerning one’s body that one can make in a lifetime, except perhaps the decision of the terminally ill in their choice of whether to discontinue necessary medical treatment.’’
Oh, look. The left is trying to change the language about abortion by equating medical emergencies to abortions when they’re NOT abortions. Also, if this is what is taught in medical school it needs to change:
Dr. Cecilia Grande, an OBGYN in southern Florida, told News 6 that issues could arise if the state considers unborn babies to be alive, as mothers — the “incubator,” as she called them — may need to receive emergency services involving stillbirths or miscarriages.
“A patient comes in with a pregnancy that’s wanted but broker [sic] her water at 18 weeks, and we have a 15-week ban. What’s going to happen?” she said. “In medical school, you are taught that life begins when the baby comes out and can be on its own. Before that, the mom is the incubator. If mom dies, baby died.”
Grande said that with the potential abortion restrictions, she was concerned women wouldn’t be aware of an issue with the pregnancy until it’s too late.
“I fear what happens if I get a patient, and my patient shows up in the emergency room, and they are having a miscarriage, and they are passed 15 weeks,” she said. “Am I going to be investigated?”
Gee, how about you try to stop labor or allow the baby to be born and try to save it?
If your patient is having a miscarriage IT IS NOT AN ABORTION. Stop making women who had a miscarriage think they aborted their child. My God could you be more of a ghoul!?
MOMENTS AGO: #Florida Gov. #DeSantis on #abortion law ruled unconstitutional: “That's something that was decided under state law that was not unanticipated. It was not of course something we were happy to see.” https://t.co/Eg57JlpQ3A pic.twitter.com/ArKhZN4hRd
— WPEC CBS12 News (@CBS12) June 30, 2022
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Comments
These Drs they are pumping out, mainly women, are insane and I wouldn’t trust my life to them
I haven’t had time to review every nuance of that 1989 Fl. S. Ct. case but in a quick review it seems to slips back and forth between Roe and state law, although it purports to rest on state constitutional grounds. It’s a confused mass of poor reasoning that stands re-hearing in light of Dobbs.
The Florida State Consitution is fairly clear then. The only way abortions bans should be legal is to change that wording in the State Consitution; Or add a clause that defines an unborn child as a person with rights at a particular stage of development. Personally, I’d be fine with the latter, but I don’t want to see that privacy clause changed just for the sake of banning abortions – that would open the door to too many other areas of interference.
To change the constitution here in Florida it takes 60% of a threshold at a given election year. Probably this won’t make it. As for the Constitution being “clear” as you state that is in the eye of the beholder. In this case, it is the Florida Supreme Court who will make the final determination. Now, post Roe, and a State Supreme Court that is one of the most conservative courts of any state, the possibility of Judge Cooper’s temporary stay very well could be reversed.
Thank you for clarifying for me that this ruling is “just” a stay.
Doesn’t seem clear to me. Is an abortion part of one’s “private life”? Is sex? Is prostitution? I don’t know. However, it does seem clear to me the FL Constitution prohibits the kind of intrusive dragnets and generalized investigations, reporting, and record keeping necessary to catch people who had abortions. You know, if they started trolling through non-public social media records, required reporting and monitoring of pregnancies by doctors, taking records of physicians and hospitals of all miscarriages by subpoena so they can be all individually investigated, reporting on who bought certain herbs or drugs, etc. that would seem to me forbidden by that clause in the FL Constitution. If they actually want to catch everyone who has abortions and not just have a rarely enforced law on the books, they will need very intrusive monitoring and reporting requirements.
Here is the rub that most do not know nor consider. The current Florida Supreme Court is more of a DeSantis and political court. (The decision by the much more liberal and political Florida Supreme Court interpreted “privacy” as an ally of abortion). The seven member court has three DeSantis appointees (one was a former state legislator and another worked for President Trump at DOE). The former Chief Justice, Charles Canady was a member of Congress who had a conservative record there. His wife is running as a pro life candidate to the Florida House. Another Justice has adopted children while the only female Justice is a strong committed Christian. One Justice (a Charlie Crist appointee) will probably vote to keep abortion legal. Could the Florida Supreme Court interpret the “privacy” clause in our Constitution as keeping abortion legal? Of course. But will they agree with the 15 week law passed by the Florida Legislature? I would not be surprised.
That’s good info. I just wonder if you consider the court “political” now that DeSantis has put on his appointees, but that it wasn’t “political” before.
This is a good feature of the SCOTUS decision. Previously, the views of conservatives were silenced, and liberals said “see it’s not political” because basically only they could speak or were listened to when they spoke. SCOTUS says nah, that isn’t consensus, Roe didn’t settle the issue, only shut up those who disagreed with it.
SCOTUS reopened political debate. That’s a good thing, right?
This is a complete leftist fantasy. Nothing in Florida law, nor in any law that has been passed or even proposed in any state, allows prosecution of a mother for having her child aborted. Thus the state would have no interest in catching such women, and certainly wouldn’t be implementing any such ridiculous system to do so. Scare tactics involving such scenarios are just a dishonest propaganda tactic against these laws.
Is that right, it’s not a crime to have an abortion, it’s just a crime to perform them? Maybe it ought to be a crime to have them too, then they wouldn’t be able to use the “coat hanger” excuse.
There are lots of things in the law that the state has no reasonable interest in. Most “morality” things, most “education” things, the juvenile justice system (it would likely be easier to process them in adult court and throw them in prison for long terms), and so on. The state gets dragged into matters, for better or worse, that the state might otherwise have no interest in.
Is it a reasonable view that the state is merely an an expected-utility-maximizing individual? Then it’s too easy to wonder if we’re better off deporting the state and having simple anarchy. I wonder it anyway.
Not exactly. The current interpretation of the FL Constitution by a previous FL Supreme CT in 1989 is that its privacy provisions support a right to abortion. That much is certainly true. The FL Constitution doesn’t explicitly state that abortion is a right The 1989 decision infers that a right exists from the non specific privacy protection language.
However that previous interpretation is always subject to review, modification or being overturned outright by a future ruling of the FL Supreme CT. Just the same as Dobbs overturned Roe and Casey.
The person in the womb should be considered a “natural person” and so now we have the competing interests of two natural persons
Can they be a “person” before they have been born?
Of course. Is the baby kicking? Does the baby have feelings? Yes and yes.
The definition is “A living human.”
A baby in the womb is certainly living.
Why on earth not?
Every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion….
Uh huh.
Not including the natural person inside the womb, which we all know is not a natural person but a rock and/or kitten and/or basketball and/or etc.
I thought as I read this, “Ah, so babies are UNNATURAL persons…”
Elective abortion, a wicked solution, or human rights performed for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes.
That said, there is no mystery in sex and conception, the nominally secular Pro-Choice ethical religion assumes/asserts that women and men possess neither dignity nor agency, and normalizes human life as negotiable, discardable commodities. One step forward, two steps backward.
The only gray area for me is intervention after conception but prior to implantation in the womb. I agree that an embryo is a unique human being. However, should a woman decide to use an IUD or “Plan B,” I can acknowledge that that is truly her private decision.
Women who are victims of rape MUST go to the hospital immediately and report the incident to the police.
I agree.
For what it’s worth, Jewish law says an embryo is not a person, but a foetus is, and draws the line at 40 days from conception.
An absolute right to commit abortion? Elective abortion as a human rite? Will the right to terminate a human life, a “burden” h/t Obama, for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes, be limited to females by Nature, or equitable and inclusive?
Ah, I see, so if the abortionist were a state actor this clause would protect the baby. But since the abortionist is a private actor it doesn’t.
Still, I don’t think someone’s private life includes murdering someone else, even if it’s done in a locked room with only the killer and the victim, let alone when it’s done in an operating room with all kinds of people there.
Put another way: if this clause protects abortion before birth, why doesn’t it also protect it after birth, even many years after birth? And why just the mother and not any random person?
This has always been my question. If the abortion regime continues, we may find out that it does.
The OB-GYN says they’re taught a specific answer in med school. The baby is only a person once it’s capable of “being on its own”, maybe that means after the cord is cut and the baby is breathing, something like that.
Is that actually taught as a general matter in med school? Is it the official position of any major medical body? I thought those authorities would avoid that question like the plague, taking no position on it.
For centuries, it was accepted that after “quickening,” feeling the baby move (usually around 4 months), abortion was truly murder. We now have the medical knowledge to determine life signs much earlier, and we have the means for greater reliability in contraception. WHY IS THIS EVEN AN ISSUE??????
As the recent decision showed, abortion was a crime even before quickening, it was just impossible to prosecute because how could you know the woman was pregnant?
I didn’t read it. Are you stating Mississippi law?
Supreme Court rulings mean nothing to liberals.
The only way that judge can come to that conclusion is if he considers an unborn baby to not be a “natural person”. I don’t know how a person can’t be anything but natural but he is effectively saying that a baby is a thing until the baby is born. It is always Democrats who take away humanity from humans whom they consider to be property.
That is a debatable question. The embryo or unborn baby is natural, but it is a person yet? If not, at what point does it become a legal person? A way to resolve this if to amend the FL Constitution to state that a unborn human becomes a legal person at x weeks of gestation. The value of x is something that only be resolved by the voters.
The term “natural person” in law is usually meant to exclude corporations. Corporations are legally “person”, but they’re not “natural persons”.
The word miscarriage is not actually a medical term…the actual word(s) are spontaneous abortion, so I’m not surprised that they are taking this route. Of course, a spontaneous abortion is nothing like an induced abortion (and there may be times when an induced abortion is lifesaving such as ectopic pregnancy).
At the same time, this right to privacy thing is pure red herring. The state does not need to violate someone’s right to privacy in order to mandated that licensed medical professions in the state of Florida cannot perform abortions without meeting a specific set of criteria. That violates exactly no citizen’s “right to privacy”.
Too many are nothing if not bloviating, over-educated morons in robes. A normal person would have seen there are two lives involved and ruled the opposite way. I’m certain the Florida Constitution is not a covenant with death.