Physicians from around Florida gathered Wednesday in downtown Orlando to denounce a November ballot measure that seeks to amend abortion protections in the state constitution.
It was the first public appearance of the group Physicians Against Amendment 4, an organization of over 300 Florida doctors of differing specialties.
“This short amendment is downright dangerous for women,” said Dr. Angeli Akey, an internist from Gainesville. On Wednesday, she stood along 18 other physicians from around the state in a room at the Truist Financial building in Orlando.
Amendment 4 is a ballot measure that residents will vote on in the November election. The proposed amendment states:
“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. This amendment does not change the Legislature's constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”
Viability?
The word “viability” is what the physician group is strongly concerned with since the word goes undefined and suggests that abortion procedures could take place at any point in fetal development.
The term does have a definition in the state as “ the stage of fetal development when the life of a fetus is sustainable outside the womb through standard medical measures.”
According to research by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the majority of experts agree that 24 weeks is the earliest age a fetus is potentially viable. However, the ACOG states there is no formally recognized clinical definition of “viability.”
No doctor present for abortions?
Aside from the viability argument, the group expressed three other concerns. The group argues the vague language doesn’t list specific scenarios for abortion and states an abortion can be performed “when necessary to protect the patient’s health.”
But it does not define that reason, argued Akey, “which means really anything could be cited as a reason for an abortion, even a head cold or an ankle sprain.”
Physicians Against Amendment 4 took issue with two specifics in the measure, the first being the choice of words of “healthcare provider,” meaning a nursing practitioner, nursing midwife, physician’s assistant or anyone in Florida who provides health care services and is licensed or authorized to practice in the state.
Akey said that no one except a physician should be authorized to perform an abortion.
“A doctor needs to be involved,” she said. “Not only for complicated pregnancies but especially for second- and third-trimester abortions, which are high-risk surgeries and would be allowed under this amendment.”
Lastly, Florida law states that physicians cannot perform an abortion for a minor without receiving written parental consent. Amendment 4 would remove the parental consent statute but retain parental notification, which would need to occur before the abortion procedure.
An argument of semantics
Jason Weida, the Florida secretary at the Agency for Health Care Administration, stood alongside the Physicians Against Amendment 4 group and touted the amendment as dangerous. Weida said AHCA sees the proposal as not being transparent.
“Sadly, you see a lot of misinformation out there on this and other issues, but especially this issue,” he said.
The secretary did not list any examples of misinformation. However, he did mention AHCA’s “transparency website" that went live this month.
The AHCA site lists reasons it believes Amendment 4 can harm women’s health by eliminating “common sense regulations” such as sanitization standards, the required use of general and local anesthesia, and required post-abortion medical visits.
Amendment 4 doesn’t seek to eliminate protections, said Keisha Mulfort, senior strategist with the ACLU, one of the organizations responsible for obtaining more than 1 million petition signatures to get Amendment 4 on the Nov. 5 ballot. The process was spearheaded by the Floridians Protecting Freedom coalition.
“Amendment 4 will do exactly what it says, and that is to prevent the government from interfering in the health care decisions between a woman and her doctor,” she said.
The ACLU came out against AHCA and its denouncement of Amendment 4, calling it unprecedented for a state agency to launch a campaign against a ballot measure.
Central Florida Public Media reached out to AHCA and asked why it chose to weigh in on a voter issue. The agency did not respond.
“We're seeing Floridians' tax dollars being used to wage a war on women's freedom to make their own decisions about their own bodies,” Mulfort said.
On Thursday, the ACLU and Southern Legal Counsel filed a joint lawsuit on behalf of Floridians Protecting Freedom, suing AHCA to "stop the State of Florida's campaign to oppose Amendment 4 through the dissemination of false, inflammatory, and misleading information."
As for the physicians, Akey said the amendment language is ultimately what she has a problem with. She and the other physicians don’t think that vague wording should be enshrined into the constitution.
“The current law was obtained through the legislative process,” Akey said. “It's clear that there might still be some disagreement about the specifics of these laws, but the right way to fix that is to go back through the legislative process, not enshrine something this radical into our state's founding documents.”
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