Florida Abortion Rights Ballot Measure Fails After Months-Long Crusade by DeSantis
Amendment 4 narrowly failed to win 60% of the vote, meaning Florida’s devastating six-week abortion ban will stay in effect, whatever the presidential outcome.
Photo: Getty Images AbortionPolitics 2024 Election
On May 1, Florida’s six-week abortion ban took effect, shuttering access to the procedure across the entire South. Six months later, Florida Republicans led by Gov. Ron DeSantis managed to crush Amendment 4, a ballot measure to enshrine a right to abortion in the state Constitution and repeal the current ban. To be clear, Amendment 4 received a decisive majority of the vote—around the same as the strong margins in other states that have successfully passed abortion rights ballot measures. The only difference is that Florida requires ballot measures to receive 60% of the vote to succeed, and Amendment 4 fell slightly short, receiving about 57% of the vote.
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The state Supreme Court first approved Amendment 4 in April, the same day the court allowed the six-week ban to take effect. From the moment Amendment 4 got on the ballot, DeSantis waged an all-out political war against the measure. This included threatening local TV stations with criminal charges for airing ads in support of the ballot measure, publishing a 350-page report baselessly accusing the campaign for Amendment 4 of widespread voter fraud, and, at different points, reportedly sending election police to Amendment 4 supporters’ homes to accuse them of fraud.
Further, the DeSantis administration wielded the official state Health Department webpage to lie that Florida’s abortion ban would “protect women” and that Amendment 4 endangers them. They also devoted a significant amount of taxpayer dollars to buying TV ads spreading misinformation about Amendment 4 across the state. All of this, of course, is on top of the challenging 60% threshold, and rampant, right-wing voter suppression tactics across the state.
On Monday, the day before Election Day, the Tampa Bay Abortion Fund shared that the number of callers it had to help travel out-of-state for abortion tripled after the six-week ban took effect. The fund expects 2024 to mark a record year in spending. In June, the Florida Access Network abortion fund reported that their callers were “on average traveling over 900 miles” for out-of-state abortion care. (The closest state where Floridians can get abortions—and only through 12 weeks—is North Carolina, which is more than one state over.) Within a month of the ban taking effect, the fund already had to help 150 people travel out-of-state for abortion. The outcome of the Amendment 4 vote is even more devastating, given the astronomical funding that was poured into the unsuccessful campaign for the ballot measure, at a time when abortion funds across the country, and certainly in Florida, are struggling financially.
“As the majority of Florida voters made clear tonight, they want their reproductive freedom back,” Nancy Northup, the President & CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights said in a statement. “But due to the high 60% threshold and the state’s disinformation campaign, they must continue to live with the fear, uncertainty, and denial of care caused by the reversal of Roe. So too will countless women in the southeastern U.S., which will remain for now a virtual abortion desert.
In May, Stephanie Loraine Pineiro, executive director of FAN, called Florida’s ban “the biggest change in the abortion access landscape” since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Calla Hales, executive director of A Preferred Women’s Health Center, who oversees two clinics in North Carolina and two in Georgia, told Jezebel in May that Florida’s six-week ban is “not just not sustainable, but not really survivable.”
With the defeat of Amendment 4, the “not survivable” law in question will remain in effect. The DeSantis administration and Florida Republicans will likely be emboldened by this outcome to continue to further crack down on abortion rights, bodily autonomy writ large, and the democratic process as a whole. And pregnant people across the entire region will continue to suffer the life-or-death consequences of this…despite a majority of Floridians voting in support of abortion rights.