Provided by Jean Siebenaler, DWCF Legislative Chair

HB 5 (Grall) / SB 146 (Stargel) Fetal and Infant Mortality Reduction were filed this week and are expected to be scheduled for their first hearings next week in the House Professions & Public Health Subcommittee and Senate Health Policy Committee.  If enacted into law, the bill will prevent a physician from performing a termination of pregnancy if the physician determines the gestational age of a fetus is more than 15 weeks. There are also more stringent reporting requirements placed on medical abortions. After 15 weeks, there are no exceptions for rape or incest, though there are exceptions to save the life of the mother or if it can be proved the fetus has a fatal anomaly. It is clear women are not “free” to make their own private healthcare decisions in the free state of Florida!

We need you urgently to OPPOSE these bills by contacting the committee members in the lists at the end of this email. Remind them that you vote and ask them to stop these bills from being heard or to vote “NO” if the bill is scheduled in their committees.

Choose a few of the following talking points or create your own:

·        Denying women access to abortion results in high and unnecessary economic costs and serious consequences for children in Florida.

·        Household income of women who are denied an abortion are almost 4x more likely to fall below the federal poverty level; and these women are 3x more likely to be unemployed.

·        Children of women who were denied abortions were 3x more likely to live in households below the Federal poverty level and were less likely to achieve developmental milestones than the existing children of women who had abortions.

·        There is a huge cost to taxpayers involved in caring for unwanted children or children whose parents cannot afford to care properly for them. (Medical care, social services, etc.).

·        Abortion bans are unpopular with most Floridians, who respect the privacy of medical decision. A major of Floridians support access to abortion in all or most cases.

·        While some support abortion restrictions before viability, abortion after 21 weeks is rare – about 1% of all abortions – and only in extreme cases: severe fetal abnormality or threat to the mother’s survival.

·        Banning abortion won’t stop abortions. It will just stop safe abortion. Are we ready to return to the days of back-alley abortions? Of desperate women attempting self-abortions or abortions performed by unlicensed providers? Severe health consequences and deaths of young women are inevitable.

·        Abortion does not increase a woman’s risk of suicidal thoughts or the chance she will develop PTSD, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, or lower life satisfaction.

·        95% of women said abortion was the right decision for them.

·        Women who could not terminate unwanted pregnancies were more likely to remain in contact with violent partners, putting themselves and their children at greater risk than if they had received the abortion.

·        Continuing an unwanted pregnancy and giving birth is associated with more serious health problems than abortion.

·        When women can control the timing of pregnancy, children benefit.

Contact the following members of the House Professions and Public Health Subcommittee for HB 5. 

Contact the following members of the Senate Health Policy Committee for SB 146. 

Thank you