Florida introduced one of the strictest abortion bans in the United States from today, already after six weeks of pregnancy, in what President Joe Biden called “a nightmare” triggered by his election rival and predecessor Donald Trump.
Trump boasted about how the justices he appointed allowed the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the nation’s right to abortion in 2022, paving the way for the 21 states that have so far introduced full or partial bans. “Today, an extreme abortion ban goes into effect in Florida that bars reproductive health care before many women even know they are pregnant,” Biden lamented in a statement. “There is one person responsible for this nightmare: Donald Trump.”
Florida’s tough new law replaces the previous 15-week ban and leaves women and clinics across the Southern United States scrambling for alternatives. Florida was one of the few states in the Southern region where the time limit for abortion was still relatively high, and many women went there to terminate their pregnancies.
Kamala Harris has become the main voice of the campaign on abortion rights and today she was in Florida, where she spoke in the city of Jacksonville. In her speech, she described the bans in Florida and 20 other states as “Trump abortion bans.” “This ban applies to many women before they even know they are pregnant, which tells us that the extremists who wrote this ban don’t even know how a woman’s body works. Or they just don’t care,” the vice president attacked .
Despite welcoming the Supreme Court ruling, Trump has recently sidestepped the issue of abortion, evidently concerned by polls that prove him wrong on the issue. In a recent Time interview he said that if he returns to the White House he will let the states decide when asked if he would support a federal abortion ban.
Florida – where Trump spends much of his time at his Mar-a-Lago resort – is governed by Republican Ron DeSantis. The conservative politician, who unsuccessfully ran for the GOP nomination this year, signed legislation to lower the limit from 15 weeks to six weeks in April 2023. The Sunshine State Supreme Court rejected the latest appeal law advanced by pro-abortion groups in April, paving the way for the ban to take effect today. But Florida voters will have the chance to scrap the six-week limit in a referendum coinciding with November’s presidential election.
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