Florida is one day away of becoming the latest state to enact a rigid six-week abortion ban
Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a woman’s federal right to an abortion in 2022, Florida has been a refuge and haven for women across the Southeast who needed abortion care as bans swept the Deep South. That changes on Wednesday, however, when Florida’s six-week abortion ban goes into effect.
Under the state’s current law, which allows for abortions up until 15 weeks of pregnancy, there were more than 84,000 abortions provided in Florida last year, according to state records – and 7,736 were performed on women who crossed state lines to access abortion care here.
Of the 16 states that ban abortion outright, eight are in the South (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Tennessee), according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that focuses on reproductive rights worldwide. Now Florida will join Georgia and South Carolina with six-week abortion bans — a time when a woman may not be aware she is even pregnant.
“We know that Florida prior to this bill going into effect has really been an important point for access in a region as a whole,” says Kimya Forouzan, a principal policy advisor with the Guttmacher. “We saw in 2023 8,940 more abortions provided in Florida compared to 2020, which was a 12% increase. And we know that looking at the policies of nearby states, so much of this is because Florida is in the region that it’s in and was the state that had policies that still allowed people to access care, and obviously with this upcoming change, that’s really going to change things for the whole region.”
https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/04/30/florida-is-one-day-away-of-becoming-the-latest-state-to-enact-a-rigid-six-week-abortion-ban/
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