Last week, Florida lawmakers passed a bill banning abortions in the state after 15 weeks gestation. The bill was sent to the desk of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday. He told reporters on Friday that he will sign the bill into law.
The Associated Press reported that DeSantis told reporters “I think that we’ll be able to sign that in short order,” referring to the bill. The bill is similar to legislation currently under review by the Supreme Court in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Dobbs pertains to a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi and could overturn landmark decisions Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Florida is not the only state working to restrict abortion at 15 weeks gestation. Lawmakers in Arizona and West Virginia have introduced similar legislation.
Earlier this month, as I reported, a state House member who supported the 15-week ban, Rep Dana Trabulsy, a Republican from Fort Pierce, reportedly said during a House debate that she had an abortion.
“This is the right to life and to give up life is unconscionable to me,” Trabulsy said during the debate. She added that she felt “ashamed” and has “regretted it [her abortion] everyday since.”
A Democratic lawmaker who opposed the bill, Rep. Tracie Davis, from Jacksonville, said that she once had an abortion and that “Florida has 99 plus problems and this [abortion] is not one of them,” according to Politico.
Last year, Townhall covered how the Charlotte Lozier institute released a study that compared the USA’s abortion laws to abortion laws across 50 countries, independent states, and semi-autonomous regions in Europe.
“No European nation allows elective abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, as is effectively permitted in several U.S. states, and America is one of only a small handful of nations, along with China and North Korea, to permit any sort of late-term elective abortion,” Angelina B. Nguyen, CLI associate scholar and author of the study, said.
“Mississippi’s law limiting elective abortion to 15 weeks is among the mainstream in comparison to European limitations on elective abortion. The majority of European countries that allow elective abortion limit it to 12 weeks. This finding demonstrates that Mississippi’s law limiting elective abortion to 15 weeks is neither extreme nor outside the norm in comparison to European practice,” the findings continued. “Mississippi’s law brings the United States a small step closer both to European and global norms.”
Last week, I reported how an proposed amendment to Florida’s bill would require fathers to begin paying child support at 15 weeks, once abortion is no longer legal in the state.