Florida governor Rick Scott signed into law a bill that prevents any state funding from going to clinics that provide abortion services. This is the most recent in a long list of Florida laws, with similar laws in many other Republican-controlled states, which attempt to limit abortion access and chip away at Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion.
Because abortion access is federally protected, states cannot outright ban the practice, but they can, and do take steps to make getting abortions as hard as possible.
State funds were already prohibited from being used to fund abortions in Florida. This law also requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within a reasonable distance of the clinic where they would actually perform the abortion.
Clinics will face new inspections by the health department, and tighter rules for disposing of fetal tissue. There is also a law, passed last year and which recently went into effect, which requires women to wait 24 hours before they can have an abortion.
The new law is particularly onerous because it prevents any state funding from going to any clinic that provides abortion services, such as Planned Parenthood, which uses the overwhelming majority of it’s resources for services other than abortion.
Health screenings, medical tests, and a number of other services are offered for women who might otherwise not be able to afford them, and now none of these things can have state funding.
As always, law-makers argued that they want to protect women with new safeguards, from a service that poses little to no threat to women when performed correctly, and not to shut down clinics.
But, as always, those arguments are obviously disingenuous, and nobody believes them. The law is expected to face legal opposition before it goes into effect on July 1.
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