Threats, door-knocking and restraining orders: Inside Ron DeSantis’s war on abortion rights in Florida

A federal judge offered a withering single-sentence summary to tell Ron DeSantis why his administration can’t threaten to criminally prosecute TV stations for airing abortion rights ads.

“To keep it simple for the State of Florida,” Judge Mark Walker wrote on October 17, “it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”

Police have knocked on doors. Government-funded ad campaigns and websites have called opponents liars, and state investigators have accused them of fraud. State officials sent cease and desist letters to local news networks threatening them with legal action, which the judge blasted as “indirect” government censorship. The state attorney who sent the letters abruptly stepped down after sending them. “A man is nothing without his conscience,” he wrote in his resignation letter.

It was DeSantis’s office that drafted the letters, according to court documents.

Judge Walker dealt a temporary blow to the Republican governor’s efforts. But advocates fear DeSantis is paving the way to throw out election results for a ballot measure that would protect reproductive rights. If approved by voters, that ballot measure would derail the governor’s anti-abortion agenda and overturn the state’s abortion bans.

“Certainly we’re worried about that as a possibility,” says Florida civil rights attorney Dan Marshall. Marshall works with Southern Legal Counsel, who are among several groups that sued the state to stop its “misinformation campaign” against Amendment 4.

“We believe that it’s rightfully on the ballot and that there are no grounds to challenge it at this point, and so if the state tries to do it, then there will be a fight about it,” he adds.

The DeSantis administration has deployed “election police” to question people who signed a petition in support of the amendment. A subsequent report accused petitioners of fraud, and a taxpayer-funded website accused the campaign of spreading “lies” about abortion care. The same day that the abortion rights campaign sued the governor for targeting the ads, anti-abortion activists filed a suit of their own to try to get the proposal thrown off the ballot.

“The stakes are really, really high,” state representative Anna Eskamani tells The Independent.

“I can only assume that our path to victory is so clear, even for our opposition, that all they can do is spread misinformation, spend tax dollars doing so, all the way to the point of creating these allegations of fraud, which are not based in reality,” she adds.

Isaac Menasche is among one million people in Florida who signed petitions to get the measure on the ballot. He recently reported that a law enforcement officer knocked on his door to ask him about signing it.

“I’m not a person who is going out there protesting for abortion,” Menasche told The Tampa Bay Times. “I just felt strongly, and I took the opportunity when the person asked me to say, ‘Yeah, I’ll sign that petition.’”

In 2022, DeSantis unveiled the Office of Election Crimes and Security, a first-of-its-kind agency under the governor’s direction that voting rights groups feared would be used as a political tool to intimidate voters.

That so-called “election police” unit was previously deployed to the homes of formerly incarcerated people who were accused of illegally voting. Most of those charges were eventually dropped.

A state agency that operates under the governor’s office also published a website and social media accounts to advocate against Amendment 4, drawing allegations that DeSantis is violating state law by using a government agency and taxpayer dollars to lobby against it.

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration claims that Amendment 4 “threatens women’s safety” and demands that the state should not become an “abortion tourism destination.”

Abortion is outlawed abortion at roughly six weeks of pregnancy in a state that is surrounded by other deep south states where most abortions are banned at all stages of pregnancy.

Voters will be asked whether Florida’s constitution should be amended to state that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

If it passes, the state’s anti-abortion laws will effectively be overturned.

“Florida was the refuge for those seeking access to reproductive care,” Eskamani tells The Independent. “This election is not just about Florida women. It’s about patients across the southeast who need access to care.”

The Yes On 4 campaign is also a fundraising powerhouse. Indeed, it raised more than $17 million from 2,936 donors between October 5 and October 11, according to the campaign, and nearly $90 million since its launch.

DeSantis has defended the use of state resources to investigate and attack the Amendment 4 campaign, saying his administration was doing everything “above board” and “not electioneering.” He claimed that “there’s a lot of seedy activity going on.”

Weeks later, his administration released an unprecedented, 348-page report alleging “widespread petition fraud” with sweeping generalizations about the campaign to collect signatures without showing data or evidence to support them. The report accuses organizers of illegally paying petitioners and estimates more than 16 percent of petitions should never have been validated.

“The fraud outlined in this report is unacceptable, and it is imperative that the state consider major reforms to the initiative petition process to prevent groups from doing this ever again in Florida,” it states.

Yes On 4 campaign director Lauren Brenzel said in a statement said the report is “nothing more than dishonest distractions and desperate attempts to silence voters.”

To get the amendment on November’s ballots, petitioners collected more than 900,000 verified signatures from registered voters across the state, which were then collected and reviewed by county elections officials.

The report alleges that election supervisors in several counties “failed their statutory obligation to verify petition forms.”

A spokesperson for the office of Palm Beach County pointed out to The Independent that state officials only reviewed 41 of more than 103,000 petitions processed by the county, “which equates to less than four one-hundredths of a percent (.039%).”

On October 3, the Florida Department of Health wrote a letter to WFLA TV, which aired a campaign ad supporting Amendment 4 that featured a woman named Caroline, who was pregnant when she learned she had terminal brain cancer. She had an abortion to prepare herself for radiation and treatment.

The Health Department threatened legal action if it stayed on air.

“These ads are unequivocally false and detrimental to public health in Florida,” Jae Williams, communications director for Florida’s health department, told The Independent. “The media continues to ignore the truth that Florida’s heartbeat protection law always protects the life of a mother and includes exceptions for victims of rape, incest, and human trafficking.”

Florida’s anti-abortion law does have limited exceptions, including in instances to protect a patient’s life. But providers and abortion rights advocates say conditions on care — with severe civil and criminal penalties — have opened up a complicated legal minefield.

Caroline said her abortion “was the hardest decision I have ever made in my life.”

“My abortion allowed me more time to be a mother to my daughter and a wife to my husband,” she told reporters on October 18.

Florida’s anti-abortion law forced her “to choose between my health and being there for my child,” she said. “And no one should have to make that choice.”

When her son was four years old, Deborah was “overjoyed” to learn she was pregnant with her second child. During a routine ultrasound in her 23rd week, she learned that her baby did not have kidneys. The condition is fatal.

At the time, abortion in Florida was banned past the 15th week. She was forced to carry her pregnancy to term. Her baby died 94 minutes later.

“My husband and I’s hands were tied by politicians, and a decision that should have only been between my family and our doctors,” she said. “Telling our toddler that his mom was going into labor but we wouldn’t be coming home with his baby brother was an unbearable type of heartbreak.”

The women said they are sharing their story “to bring change and to give doctors and women their medical rights back,” Deborah said. “Our son should not have died the way he did, and Florida’s full abortion ban is to blame.”