Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized President Joe Biden’s promotion of an abortion amendment in Florida, noting that it was written in a manner “intentionally designed to deceive voters.”
He continued: “His policies have caused families to suffer with higher prices and higher interest rates. And now he’s coming down to try to support a constitutional amendment that will mandate abortion up until the moment of birth, that will eliminate parental consent for minors, and that is written in a way that is intentionally designed to deceive voters.
“So all I can tell you is Floridians are not buying what Joe Biden is selling, and in November, we’re going to play an instrumental role in sending him back to Delaware where he belongs.”
The pro-abortion amendment referred to by Mr. DeSantis will appear on ballots in November as Amendment 4, and voters can cast their votes on the issue.
The president also asked the audience to vote for Democrats in the November election to bring back Roe v. Wade as the “law of the land.” He blamed former President Donald Trump for having “stripped the right away from women in America.”
The president and other speakers at the venue claimed that President Trump and his allies will push to impose a federal abortion ban if they come to power.
The former president has clarified on several occasions that he does not support a federal abortion ban and that the issue should be left to the states.
“Far-left Democrats are targeting Florida in a desperate attempt to rally their base and rescue the failed Biden-Harris administration. The one strategy they think will save them in November is to lie and fearmonger about abortion and pro-life laws. This is the time for Floridians to stand up and prove them wrong,” Ms. Daniel said in a statement.
Court Upholds Abortion Ban
President Biden’s Florida visit came as the state Supreme Court issued a judgment earlier this month upholding Florida’s 15-week limit on abortion.Mr. DeSantis signed the 15-week abortion ban in 2022, which was immediately legally challenged by affiliates of Planned Parenthood.
“Based on our analysis finding no clear right to abortion embodied within the Privacy Clause, Planned Parenthood cannot overcome the presumption of constitutionality and is unable to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the 15-week ban is unconstitutional,” the opinion reads. “We conclude there is no basis under the Privacy Clause to invalidate” the 15-week abortion ban.
In the ruling, the justices clarified that since the court has upheld the 15-week ban, the “six-week ban will take effect in thirty days.”
The amendment would “lay ticking time bombs that will enable abortion proponents later to argue that the amendment has a much broader meaning than voters would ever have thought,” she wrote. “It conveys that the amendment would continue to allow the Legislature to restrict abortion after ‘viability.’”
However, the attorney general argued that the term “viability” is very vague and open to interpretations.
“Some voters will read ‘viability’ as Roe and Casey used the term—as referring to a baby ‘potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb.’ Others will understand ‘viability’ in the more traditional clinical sense—as referring to a pregnancy that, but for an abortion or other misfortune, will result in the child’s live birth,” she wrote.
“This ambiguity is no small interpretive quibble; ‘viability’ in the Roe/Casey sense occurs much later than in the traditional clinical sense. And polling shows that the stage of pregnancy at which abortion becomes illegal is crucial to whether voters approve of particular restrictions on abortion.”
Amendment 4 requires the support of 60 percent of voters in order to pass. And in the event it passes in November, provisions of the amendment will supersede the six-week abortion ban.
