Florida Doctors Describe Dystopic Horrors as DeSantis Tries to Tank Abortion Measure
Amid a brazen, state-sanctioned disinformation campaign against a ballot measure to restore abortion rights in Florida — including visits to voters’ homes by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ election goon squad — doctors say the state’s ban is putting their patients’ lives at risk, forcing them to confront unfathomably dark medical scenarios, and some are warning they may be forced to leave the state if the measure fails this November.
The Planned Parenthood Health Center in Miami, Florida, has remained open, but since May 1, there has been a big sign in the lobby informing patients that, with limited exceptions, clinicians are not allowed to provide abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Many of the patients that Dr. Chelsea Daniels sees on a daily basis are not aware of the state’s ban before they see the sign.
Abortion was restricted in Florida — first after 15 weeks, and later after six weeks gestation — following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision ending the federal right to abortion in 2022.
“A lot of times, people are truly just flabbergasted,” Daniels tells Rolling Stone. “This is the first they’re hearing about it.”
For those whose period is more than two weeks late, it’s likely already too late to obtain care in their home state. “The panic starts to build right away,” says Daniels, a staff physician at the health center. “Suddenly, they’re faced with this horrible situation where they either have to take days off work to receive care, or they have to continue a pregnancy that potentially is threatening to their life, or that could upend their life.”
Since the law went into effect four and a half months ago, her office has experienced an influx not just of patients who are unaware of the new law, but also of referrals from local OB-GYNs and hospitals afraid of offering treatment themselves. Just a few weeks, Daniels says, she treated a patient with a non-viable, first-trimester pregnancy — a miscarriage, essentially — and a condition that most doctors and facilities should be able to easily handle.
“She had four different ultrasounds confirming non-viability. We were her fifth appointment — and no one would act, because they were so afraid of what the law could do to them,” Daniels says. That patient’s experience, she says, is emblematic of the current climate in Florida.
A new report, released on Tuesday by the nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights, confirms what Daniels is seeing for herself: that many Floridians don’t realize that the state’s six-week ban is effectively a two-week ban, a vanishingly short window further winnowed by Florida’s required 24-hour waiting period; that many doctors are delaying or refusing to provide necessary care out of fear of losing their medical licenses or going to jail; and that those doctors inclined to continue to providing necessary care have found navigating Florida’s exceptions is a Kafkaesque nightmare.
One clinician interviewed by PHR’s researchers described a patient with terminal pancreatic cancer who learned she was pregnant during a PET scan. “Because she had been on and off chemotherapy and radiation for the better part of five years, because of her recurrences, her periods had been irregular for ages… She has always wanted to be pregnant, but never could because of her treatments,” the OB-GYN recalled. “Her oncologist said, ‘We have to stop treatment unless you have an abortion, essentially because this poses a risk to the pregnancy.’”
It took more than a week for that doctor to get the specific documentation that would justify a health exception under Florida’s ban, then arrange for an abortion at a hospital that could accommodate her specific medical risks, a 4-hour drive away. “You want to grab these Supreme Court judges and bring them in the room and say: Look what you are doing to people,” the doctor told PHR. “Let this woman be able to receive palliative chemotherapy, which is the least we can do for her, for Christ’s sake.”
A separate OB-GYN who works inside a hospital recounted a heated disagreement with the nursing staff in their emergency room, who were refusing to provide medication to a patient with an ectopic pregnancy — a life-threatening condition that occurs when an egg implants in the fallopian tube rather than the uterus. “They were refusing to give it because they were concerned about the legality of giving it as an — they kept calling it an abortive agent,” that doctor said.
A third doctor spoke of being hamstrung by unnecessary paperwork while trying to treat a patient experiencing a premature rupture of membrane, an emergency condition that can be fatal without intervention. “Let us roll in with a brochure of state paperwork. Let us start filling it all out together, because — even though you know what you want — we have to do all this paperwork,” the doctor recalled. “There is still a delay that occurs with all of this that seems unnecessary in a situation where delay potentially could increase the chance of infection.”
PHR’s report, derived from interviews with more than 25 clinicians across the state, was published amid the DeSantis administration’s ongoing efforts to sabotage Amendment 4, the ballot measure that would relegalize abortion in the state. Under Florida law, the measure needs to win the support of 60 percent of voters to pass.
First, DeSantis, Republican lawmakers, and the Heritage Foundation teamed up to add language — supposedly a “financial impact statement” — to the amendment, claiming it “would result in significantly more abortions and fewer live births per year in Florida.” It further asserts, “An increase in abortions may negatively affect the growth of state and local revenues over time.”
DeSantis’ Florida Agency for Health Care Administration — which oversees licensing for health care facilities and manages the state’s Medicaid program — has published a website platforming baseless, political attacks on Amendment 4. The site says the measure “threatens women’s safety,” and argues: “We must keep Florida from becoming an abortion tourism destination state.”
The agency is also running TV and radio ads. One TV ad states that “abortions are available before a child’s heartbeat is detected, and in cases of rape or incest, and at all points in pregnancy to save the life and health of the mother.” The ad directs viewers to visit the state’s misleading website opposing Amendment 4.
The ballot measure’s sponsor, represented by the ACLU Foundation of Florida, has filed a lawsuit against AHCA to have the website and the TV and radio ads taken down.
Beyond the state-sponsored disinformation campaign, DeSantis’ administration has dispatched Florida Department of Law Enforcement officers to question voters who signed petitions supporting the ballot measure.
In order to get the measure onto the November ballot, organizers for Amendment 4 collected 997,035 signatures from voters across Florida, but in recent weeks, some signatories have reported officers have come to their homes to question them about their signatures — signatures that were verified by the state itself months ago, before the measure was even approved.
“We paid $1.1 million to the state of Florida to have them validate the signatures,” says Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for Yes on 4. “The attempts to question that are very much the Florida playbook: When you’re losing on an issue, it’s much easier to make accusations about ‘malfeasance’ than it is to acknowledge a really unpopular policy.”
She see the visits and the state-funded website attacking Amendment 4 as shameless efforts to intimidate and confuse voters. “The state knows that abortion access is popular and doesn’t want to speak to the actual issue at hand here, which is that Florida has one of the most harmful abortion bans in the nation,” Brenzel says.
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