The Status of Abortion Access in Florida After the Recent Ballot Initiative

After the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, and for many years before, Florida served as an abortion access point for many people in the South. But with changing judicial interpretation of “privacy” in the state, access to abortion in Florida has shifted. Laura Goodhue, Executive Director of Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, sits down to talk with us about the status of abortion access in Florida and the outcome of the state ballot initiative in the November 2024 election.

After the passage of S.B. 8 in Texas and the overturning of Roe, clinics in the northern area of Florida saw a quadrupled number of patients coming in from out of state seeking care. In May 2024, Florida passed a 6-week abortion ban, which has drastically impacted access for both Floridians and those traveling for abortion care. This year’s ballot initiative was aimed at passing a citizen-led Constitutional amendment clarifying that abortion is a decision to be left to a doctor and patient. It passed by 57%; but the current rule in Florida requires a 60% majority vote for the initiative to pass, so it did not go into effect. Find more information on Florida’s Amendment 4 here.

Links from this episode

Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates
Florida Planned Parenthood Action on Facebook
Florida Planned Parenthood Action on X
Information on Florida’s Amendment 4
Florida’s Six-Week Abortion Ban Will Devastate Access in the South podcast episode

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Transcript

Jennie: Welcome to rePROs Fight Back, a podcast on all things related to sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. [music intro]

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Jennie: Welcome to rePROs Fight Back, a podcast on all things related to sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. [music intro]

Jennie: Hi rePROs. How's everybody doing? I'm your host Jennie Wetter, and my pronouns are she/her. So y'all, I'm still thinking through all of the many ways that the election is gonna impact all of the issues I work on and honestly my life and just all of the things we need to be focusing on. So, still feeling a little overwhelmed, but there was a big, bright spot last week. I previously told you all that we had won a Silver Signal award for Activism, Public Service and Social Impact. Well, last Tuesday they had a reception for award winners in New York. So it was so much fun. I went up to New York and got to hang out with some other podcasters. I got to see an old roommate who came to the reception with me. It was just really nice to get away from everything and not be, like, worrying about work, but thinking of all of the fun, right? Thinking of all of the fun things I've done on the podcast. All of the wonderful people I've talked to, getting to talk to other podcasters about their work and what they are working on. It was, it was just so much fun to go and celebrate the podcast. And I'm still, again, back to the overwhelmed. I am feeling really overwhelmed with these award wins this year. It's something I honestly never, never could have expected. It still feels very unreal in so many ways. So, it was fun to get to be around other podcasters. It was also fun. They had a place for us to get professional photos taken with our awards. So, if you go and check out our stuff online @rePROsFightBack on Facebook and Twitter and @reprosfb on Instagram, you'll see pictures of me with our award. So, it was so much fun. I'm really glad I was able to do it. Like I said, it was really nice to take a moment away and celebrate. I was so excited to get to see an old roommate and have a lovely dinner with her afterwards. It was just really nice to have like a full day away before I came back and had to dive back into the work. So, very exciting. I think maybe that's all I'm gonna really talk about today. There'll be some more stuff to tell y'all next week, so stay tuned. I guess one thing I haven't done in a while, so housekeeping, if you all love the podcast, a really great way to help others find it is if you rate and review the podcast on your favorite podcast platform. It helps other people find the podcast. So, it would be really wonderful if you love us, if you could take a second and show us some love. I would really appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, y'all, so let's turn to this week's episode. So, we're gonna have a couple episodes talking about what the impacts of the election are, so that'll be coming up soon. But this week we're gonna talk about specifically Florida and the Florida ballot initiative. I'm so excited to talk about what happened and why it was needed to be on the ballot to begin with, with Laura Goodhue from the Florida Alliance for Planned Parenthood Affiliates. And yeah, it's so great to hear about everything that was going on in Florida. So, let's change my interview with Laura.

Jennie: Hi Laura. Thank you so much for being here today.

Laura: Thanks, it's my pleasure.

Jennie: I am so excited to talk to you about what happened in Florida. But first maybe let's just do, would you like to introduce yourself and include your pronouns?

Laura: Yeah, so my name's Laura Goodhue. I use she and her pronouns, and I have been advocating for reproductive health, rights, and justice in Florida for a long time now, over a decade. Before that, I did, you know, consumer health care advocacy, but I live in Palm Beach County, which is also the home of Mar-a-Lago, and soon to be a president again, but love living in Florida. I love the environment and raising two active teenage boys.

Jennie: That's so great. Okay, so I figured before we get into like the ballot initiative and what happened, maybe we should just do a little framing about why it's so important. We're talking about abortion access in Florida and what it looks like right now.

Laura: Oh, Florida. So we served 84,000 patients in 2023, so the year before this year. When Dobbs was repealed, Roe v. Wade was repealed in 2022, it sent us like many other states into a tailspin. But what's unique about Florida is that for so long we've served as an access point in the South and certainly the Southeast. So if you look at the map in terms of where people can access reproductive health care, even before Roe v. Wade was overturned, Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, there just wasn't anywhere. You know, clinics were closing because of state laws, but Florida has, you know, last time I looked over 50 providers, and that is really unheard of in the South and Southeast. And one of those reasons is because Florida has strong state constitution protections. For many years and for a very long time, really since the eighties, I guess seventies and eighties, we've always had, well, Florida has a stronger right to privacy than the US Constitution. And that's how the judges interpreted it. And much like we saw, you know, with the US Supreme Court, the judges in Florida kind of changed their tune as well. And that's when they started saying, eh abortion doesn't necessarily mean that your individual privacy rights are protected. And so that's when things started to change around the same time that Roe v. Wade was overturned and that's Florida.

Jennie: Yeah. And it was so important as Florida started losing access because one, there's so many people in Florida, but two people were going there.

Laura: We are [indiscernible], especially in our northern health centers. So like the panhandle, you know, facing Alabama, our Tallahassee, which is the state capitol, we saw like the quadruple number of patients that we had seen before. Roe v. Wade was overturned. And, you know, Texas also impacted it, the SB8 in Texas.

Jennie: Mm-hmm.

Laura: And then our other center near the coast, Jacksonville, which is also in the northeast corner. We also saw, I say quadruple the number of patients. So, we went from, you know, being fairly busy and Planned Parenthood provides a full range of reproductive health care services. We've always been busy, you know, with birth control and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, well person visits, the whole, the full range. But we were particularly busy in abortion care, especially in the north when other states started falling. So yeah, we're real important to the ecosystem and have been.

Jennie: Yeah, I think that's one thing that I think like general people who are not as familiar with, like, the state of play may not understand why it was so important when abortion access really got restricted in Florida and, like, why it was gonna have such a broader impact.

Laura: Yeah.

Jennie: When it got down to, what is it now, a six-week ban?

Laura: Yeah, it's a near total ban this year, went into effect in May, so we're, like, maybe six months into it. Care has dropped dramatically and it's impacted more than just Floridians, certainly the Southeast. And it's been terrible. I mean, people, if they have the means to get there and if they can find an appointment, the closest place has been North Carolina, which isn't super helpful because, you know, they may not know somebody there, but they may not be able to afford it. I'm not really sure how many health centers North Carolina has, but they're inundated. You know, it's like all the states, right? Like they're all inundated.

Jennie: Yeah.

Laura: And again, these are like people that can take off time and work and for a while, you know, we have patient navigators at Planned Parenthood and then we work closely with abortion funds to help people kind of case manage, but like, that's just become overwhelming as well.

Jennie: Ugh, yeah, I just think of how far some people are gonna have to travel now to get care.

Laura: Yeah, I mean, North Carolina, you know, like I said, the number of providers is an issue. They have a 12 week ban, right? So that's not great. And they also have a three day mandatory waiting period for no reason at all. So, I mean, it's a lot of time, again, if you can afford it, if you can find something, but to be away from your home, from your own doctors taking care of you—it is a lot on people. I mean, we already face challenges getting health care across the country. Certainly in Florida, Florida's a unique population where it's very, it's actually hard for us to just fight OB/GYNs for prenatal, for birth. Now it's even harder. You know, we have a lot of Medicare patients. We have an older population as well, and all of that puts strains on the healthcare system. And then you layer in all of these restrictions, like, I mean, we have more than just a ban. You know, we also have a waiting period. Young people under the age of 18— forget it. Like literally all I wanna say, almost impossible, which is heartbreaking. So, you know, we've got all these other restrictions on it, but it's just- traveling is not easy.

Jennie: Yeah. I think this is one of those things that we've tried to talk about on the podcast a lot is like, none of this exists in a vacuum.

Laura: Yeah.

Jennie: It's this tangled web of restrictions that people need to navigate. And those who are already marginalized are getting further marginalized in their ability to access care and are the most impacted. And you know, not everybody's gonna feel all of these restrictions equally. And like you said, like, some people can travel, but some people can't. And if you have to take off, you have to fly if you're far enough away, if you have to take time off of work or find childcare or, or, or, or, right? And like hotel rooms and all of these things, and then you add in waiting periods, it's a lot for people to navigate.

Laura: It's like today, it's Monday, right? And I'm just trying to figure out my endocrine specialist and it's noon and I've been doing it for four, four hours. [laughs].

Jennie: Yeah.

Laura: I work from home. I have the flexibility. I'm also a healthcare consumer advocate and have been for decades. And I have yet to solve the issue with my endocrine specialist. Now imagine, right? Anybody that is in a crisis situation, right, for the most [part], yeah, they're gonna probably be in a crisis situation. It is a time bound health condition, right? You have to obtain this as, I don't know, it's the worst way to deliver health care. And it's intentionally so.

Laura: Absolutely. Yeah. And that's why, you know, and then the providers, you know, we have this system, like I said, of case managers, but then that's taking resources and time away from the direct patient care. It's very difficult to find doctors. It's very difficult to, like, have a secure, well, you know, our patients are safe, but still, we have to worry about security. Other doctors don't have to worry about security. The required 24 hour waiting period, which is shorter than some states. But we still have it. It is completely arbitrary and unnecessary. So people have to schedule two appointments instead of one. And what we're finding is these, you know, poor people, they're, I say poor, like, empathetically, so, right? Yeah, yeah. But they come into the first visit and they have no idea how far along they are. And it's our ultrasound techs who are like, I am sorry you are 6.0. And they're like, well good. Do the abortion 'cause it's six weeks. And they're like, no, 'cause you have to come back. And then you're one day arbitrarily, you know, off of that timeline.

Jennie: Over.

Laura: Or they argue. And poor ultrasounds, they're just like, I'm so sorry.

Jennie: Yeah.

Laura: They have the hardest job right now. They're like, no, I didn't have, I had sex like three weeks ago. Like, that's not how you date a pregnancy. And again, like, just from the frontline workers to the patients, it's why again, and we say it all the time, but if you really peel back the layers of the onion, it's like, this is why elected officials should not be making these decisions. They have no clue how to calculate a pregnancy. They're all men in Florida anyways, in most of the places. They have no idea, no idea what we're going through.

Jennie: Okay. Now that we know what it looks like on the ground in Florida, let's talk about the ballot initiative. So what was on the ballot?

Laura: Wow. So, that was a culmination of two years of a strong coalition effort. Because our right to privacy isn't strong enough, apparently, according to these judges in our Supreme Court, we wanted to put a constitutional amendment citizen led which Florida has a really great and strong history of adopting citizen led ballot initiatives into our state constitution. So, this coalition got together two years ago to draft some language that said, you know, the government shall not interfere in decisions about abortion, it should be left between a doctor and a patient. Drafted the language went through. It's a whole story, right? But we went through a lot of hurdles there with the courts, with gathering over a million petitions, with raising an obscene amount of money, to be honest. And then passing with 57%, overwhelmingly more votes than Donald Trump.

Jennie: That was amazing.

Laura: And then womp womp. Florida has a rule in Florida that you have to get 60% of the votes to adopt a constitutional amendment. Fun fact, I worked on the campaign back in 2004 to fight that and it didn't pass with 60%. So, that's where we're at.

Jennie: I have to say, I was really worried about how the vote was gonna turn out in Florida and seeing it get so close, like I was so close, so excited for the 57%. Like, that in itself was amazing because I, you know, not being super familiar with Florida. Like, I wasn't sure that they could rally that much.

Laura: Yeah. It's a nuanced little policy thing. I mean, I think we got the same as Ohio when they passed theirs during a special election, but we got that high with a significant amount of state interference. I mean, we're not talking about a little bit.

Jennie: Oh yeah. Can we talk about the ballot? Somebody showed it to me when I was at a conference, they, like, took a picture of their ballot and I was like, this language that got thrown on here was wild.

Laura: I mean the lengths that the state went to to make this impossible, I mean, they spent tens of millions of dollars against it. Some reported, some not. Some was simply like, we're gonna do public service announcements through our health department to say that this is dangerous, which is, like, okay, your state health department that's supposed to protect you is now interfering and saying that this thing on your ballot's gonna be not safe. But the big one that you just referred to was…again, it's so wonky, right?

Jennie: Yeah.

Laura: Like, it's so hard for voters. But it's, like, the state gets to put a price tag on every citizen ballot initiative to say, hey, warning, our economists say this is gonna cost the state this much. Vote on and how you want. But we took all this information from our economists, and we are gonna tell you it's gonna, so like if you wanna do, you know, childcare for everybody in the state of Florida, it's gonna cost x amount of millions of dollars. That's the point of it. But what they did was they speculated and they said, well, and they basically use opposition talking points.

Jennie: Yeah.

Laura: They're, like, if this passes, then you'll probably have public funding for abortion. And we can't really tell you how much that's gonna cost, but it's gonna be a lot. Which, of course, it had nothing to do with public funding. And you're gonna get rid of parental consent for minors to get an abortion. And that's gonna mean that there's, what is that? Oh, that means that like, there's gonna be less tax paying citizens 'cause they'll all have been aborted. So we're not gonna be able to get that. That's how wonky, that's how crazy it was. So they wanted to use all their talking points. So that was on the ballot, that's what voters saw. And we still got 57%.

Jennie: It was so wild. 'cause like I was, she's like, no, no, you need to read it. I'm like, okay. And I start and I'm like, okay, okay. And then my jaw just dropped, like what? This is what it says?

Laura: We had no option. We had to, like, keep going and keep going. And we still did, you know?

Jennie: Was honestly like, it was crushing that y'all lost, but so excited to see 57%. Like that was a really strong indication of how much support there is. So I guess that just leads into like: what's next? Like, you were so close.

Laura: We were close. Yeah. So, we're not gonna stop. And everybody's asking us that, which is great. All of our volunteers, all of our supporters, all of our very bipartisan, Republican, Independent, Democrats, doesn't matter. They want to know what's next. So, legislature convenes, and they, you know, there were Republicans that also voted against this six week ban. Our next president of the United States, who I mentioned at the top of the show is a voter here, said that six weeks goes too far. Notice I'm not saying the name, but whatever. He gets to vote here and [he] said that six weeks goes too far. So we are calling on the legislature and that we're actually demanding that they overturn Florida's extreme abortion ban 'cause they can do that.

Jennie: I mean, it would make such a huge difference, not only for the people in Florida, but for people who, like we said, were traveling to Florida to escape their state bans.

Laura: Well, it's just, it's before you know, you're pregnant, right? Yeah. Six weeks barely shows up on an ultrasound. It's nothing. And it's just, you know, most doctors, like if you're, it's a wanted pregnancy. If it's an intended pregnancy, they won't have you come into the office until you miss two periods. So, if you're missing periods, right? So yeah, six weeks is before most people know they're pregnant and it would stop a lot of harm. We have a rape exception right now between, which is also convoluted, but between six and 15 weeks, if you've been raped, you can get an abortion. But our police departments here will not give us the documentation that we have to have legally to perform that abortion. We are literally sending 12 year olds out of state to get care because of this.

Jennie: It is…

Laura: The police department's like, no, we can't prove a crime was committed. We're still investigating. That'll take months.

Jennie: Like I just, my mind is boggled.

Laura: That one's good, right? It's not funny, it's horrific. It's horrific.

Jennie: Again, it's like all this conversation around exceptions. It's, like, the more and more you talk about them, it's like how clear they do not work.

Laura: I know.

Jennie: To get people to access care that they need.

Laura: It's not even, I mean, people are, like, you're making that up. I'm like, we're really not. Yeah. I have been on the phone with the police department. The police department’s even said, well, you're not gonna terminate, are you? That's a life. They've said that to us on the phone.

Jennie: Well, and like, people shouldn't be required to report their rape to the police either, right? So, like-

Laura: No.

Jennie: There's just-

Laura: Not at all.

Jennie: All of these barriers.

Laura: So many, especially a hostile victim, you know? Mm. It's horrible. Yeah. The health exception, not, you know, we've got women who have miscarried and are in serious danger of being in septic shock. And we had a woman come in with four ultrasounds saying, this is not viable. Can you please manage this miscarriage? This is a very intended pregnancy and I'm still carrying around this fetus.

Jennie: I just feel like the more stories you hear, they're just so heartbreaking for people just trying to access basic health care. Yeah. And it just breaks my heart every time. So I'm so glad to hear the fight is going to be continuing.

Laura: Yes.

Jennie: In Florida.

Laura: Every day.

Jennie: Because yeah, like, we really need, people just need to be able to access health care. I, and it's just as simple as that.

Laura: And it's like the people in the South haven't had it, so it's just, I know one thing I feel good about is that people are talking about it more openly. You know, obviously there's this huge stigma on abortion, but because of this past cycle with so many states that did pass and in Florida that didn't, people are like getting it because I'm just like, wow. But look at all these states, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, you know, people talk about it, but like, you know, more people than the Amber Thurmans and you know, others that have died that we don't talk about because of the stigma. It's horrific. And I don't want more people to die at all. Nobody does. But that's what it's gonna take. Unfortunately.

Jennie: If there is like one, I mean, “bright side” feels very wrong, but, like, before we had polling and, like, it depended on how the question was answered. You could see how varied the support was.

Laura: Yeah.

Jennie: But now we're seeing people like voting and stuff and seeing how popular abortion rights are has been heartening and seeing the polling support even climb as people are seeing all of the harms that are coming from these bans. So, hopefully then change follows.

Laura: Especially when political parties and politicians hijack the issue. And it's not reflective of the constituency. I mean Republicans, like, let's just name it and I think they get it now, especially women. But you know, they get it. They don't care. It's not that they don't, they don't care. They just want the state to focus on something else. A state like Florida that has been through multiple hurricanes and tornadoes, like many other states, but you know, the, the entire Gulf Coast has just been, I was canvassing, you know, days before the election day and just like looking at people with like all of their property on their front lawn from Hurricane Milton from like three weeks ago or a month ago. And I'm like, these people don't want politicians interfering in their health care. They just wanna be able to afford their home insurance. You know, they want the governor and the government to do something to protect them, but you know what, we're gonna go to a session in Tallahassee again, 60 days, they're gonna bring up the same old stuff and we're gonna keep fighting back. But like, that's what they spend the 60 days on. They spend it on this instead of fixing, like, education or, you know, expanding health care for moms and babies, you know, and it, or much less taking care of hurricanes or anything, any of the horrible things that you hear about Florida. And I know other states do. Like I said, I love my state and I'm gonna keep fighting and I'm gonna stay here and I'm gonna keep fighting for it. But it's, like, there's so many other things that we need to fix here, and this is people accessing health care, deciding what to do for their families is not one of the things that we actually need to fix.

Jennie: Okay. So, I like to wrap up the episodes focusing on actions. Like what, what can the audience do? How can the audience get involved?

Laura: Well, you know, a lot is just getting in touch with your lawmakers. Again, if you're from Florida, we have our website, the Planned Parenthood website is fappa.org, so it's F-A-P-P-A.org. We have a repeal, a call to repeal on there where you can take action. Funding our health care centers across the state. So, this is certainly Planned Parenthood and making sure that it goes to Planned Parenthood in Florida, but then also the independent clinics who need funding and the abortion funds. All of us need, you know, it's just after this very expensive battle that we just waged. We've gotta keep up the fight. And the only way we can do that is with resources.

Jennie: Yeah, and again, this goes back to our conversation at the beginning of, like, people needing to go through so many more hoops and traveling. And that means people need more money to be able to access abortion, which means the abortion funds are having to pay more. So there was so much of the like rage donating and the immediate aftermath, but all those groups still need the funding. So if you are able, like, donating really does make a difference.

Laura: Absolutely. The funds to get people places, the doctors, you know, like we have to, God love our, the only our doctors only do this 'cause they're passionate, they could do something else, right? But trying to get like a doctor hired, maintain their salary, quite honestly. And I think a lot of people, you know, they think about, oh, let's give this material assistance out there. But a lot goes into maintaining health care just like any other health care provider. That's what Planned Parenthood is. And the independent clinics too. It is not easy. And then you have to layer on security. I mean, things that people I'm sure don't think about, but just think about like, we have to do bulletproof plexiglass, you know, and that's expensive. We have to highly train our call center to screen for like secret operatives that wanna get, you know, like a, their little secret sound bite on audio. All of those things cost so much funding and it's a shame because it could be proven to other purposes, but it's what we've had to do as an ecosystem and as a health care system to continue to provide this care.

Jennie: Well Laura, thank you so much for being here today. It was so much fun to talk to you about what's going on in Florida.

Laura: Likewise. Great way to start the week. Thanks a lot, Jennie. Really appreciate it.

Jennie: Okay, y'all, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Laura. I really enjoyed talking to her about all of the things related to the ballot initiative and about access basically in Florida. It was a great conversation. So, I will see y'all next week with hopefully more of what the election is going to mean for sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice conversations. Okay. See you next week. [music outro] If you have any questions, comments, or topics you would like us to cover, always feel free to shoot me an email. You can reach me at jennie@reprosfightback.com or you can find us on social media. We're at @RePROsFightBack on Facebook and Twitter or @reprosfb on Instagram. If you love our podcast and wanna make sure more people find it, take the time to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Or if you wanna make sure to support the podcast, you can also donate on our website at reprosfightback.com. Thanks all!