By Noreen Marcus, FloridaBulldog.org
Amendment 4’s sponsor claims Republican legislators went too far in a scheme to sabotage the measure to limit government interference with abortion that voters will see on the Nov. 5 ballot.
The sponsor, Floridians Protecting Freedom (FPF), petitioned the Florida Supreme Court July 24 to rein in Senate President Kathleen Passidomo and House Speaker Paul Renner and to spike a “misleading” statement the conservative politicians would like to pair with Amendment 4.
FPF says the legislators injected politics into a standard fiscal impact statement that appears alongside every proposed constitutional amendment. A Republican-led committee crafted a message with this subtext: Returning to easily accessible abortions would hurt Florida’s economy.
The petition accuses Renner and Passidomo of taking an illegal end-run around judicial review. They had their Financial Impact Estimating Conference rewrite and politicize the statement after a trial judge rejected the first draft and while an appeal was pending.
“What should have been an easy administrative fix on outdated language has become a dirty trick to mislead voters,” said Lauren Brenzel, director of the “Yes on 4” campaign.
That back story wasn’t lost on Amy Baker, Florida’s chief economist and a member of the fiscal conference.
“I would, personally, feel more comfortable if we just did it clean and crisp,” WUSF radio quoted Baker on the panel’s final meeting last month. “We’re not making a political statement here. We are not trying to frighten people.”
But she was outvoted 3-1, and the statement survived the internal debate intact.
THE ECONOMY
The panel-approved statement warns that government might have to “subsidize abortions with public funds,” an apparent reference to Medicaid. Also, protracted litigation about Amendment 4’s scope and sweep “will result in additional costs … that will negatively impact the state budget.”
And looking ahead, “an increase in abortions may negatively affect the growth of state and local revenues over time.” Translation: Fewer babies will grow up to be taxpaying consumers.
The statement doesn’t mention the enormous costs of failing to pass Amendment 4. Children born with catastrophic and incurable conditions require 24/7 care. Women who need abortions but can’t obtain them may suffer a loss of fertility or even their lives.
Over-all, the panel’s statement reflects Florida GOP chair Evan Power’s view that, as he told Politico, “The voters of Florida care about three things: the economy, inflation and immigration.”
Notably absent from his wish list is the right to make personal reproductive decisions, a popular cause Democrats are promoting in the runup to the Nov. 5 election.
“This is not just about health care. This is about freedom,” Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried said at a Tallahassee campaign event in June.
HOW TO GET TO 60%
Here’s the text of Amendment 4:
“Limiting government interference with abortion. Except as provided in Article X, Section 22, 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.” Article X, Section 22, requiring parental notice of a minor’s abortion, would stand.
Put to a vote, reproductive rights have triumphed in almost a dozen states. But Florida requires a 60 percent majority, a higher percentage than the pro-choice turnout so far in other red states.
Still, recent polls have been favorable. And pro-choice advocates are optimistic, Anna Hochkammer, executive director of the Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition, told Politico.
“Yes, 60 percent can be an intimidating threshold,” she said. But she noted that “Florida has passed referenda at the 60 percent threshold over and over again over the last decade.”
“You get to 60 percent in Florida by being really focused about who you’re talking to, how you’re talking about abortion access and getting people to understand that it’s an issue that transcends politics,” Hochkammer said.
“You basically have to give people who are independent and Republicans permission to agree with you on this thing, to disagree with their individual candidate or their party, and to split the ticket if that’s what they feel they need to do,” she said.
TOO MANY LAWSUITS?
Now Floridians Protecting Freedom must try to convince the anti-abortion Supreme Court to grant their petition, though there’s not much daylight between the court’s politics and the fiscal panel’s cautionary economic impact statement.
On April 1, when the court accepted Amendment 4 in a 4-3 vote, some justices warned that clarifying its “vague and undefined terms,” including “viability,” “health” and “healthcare provider,” would require lots of litigation.
Along the same lines, the fiscal panel predicted Amendment 4 lawsuits “will negatively impact the state budget.” Yet it’s hard to imagine any number of lawsuits making a dent in Florida’s budget — $116.5 billion for fiscal year 2025.
On April 1 the court also voted 6-1 to authorize an extremely tough, six-week abortion ban. Only moderate Justice Jorge Labarga dissented.
The justices must be keenly aware that if voters approve Amendment 4, abortion up until fetal viability – usually 23-24 weeks of pregnancy – will be legal again. And the strict bans sanctioned by all three branches of Florida government will expire.
It took a concerted Republican effort to impose the bans in the first place. Gov. Ron DeSantis packed the Supreme Court with far-right conservatives; all five of his justices upheld abortion restrictions after the Legislature passed them and DeSantis signed them.
The sixth conservative, Justice Charles Canady, is married to a co-sponsor of the six-week abortion ban, state Rep. Jennifer Canady, R-Lakeland. The justice ignored this glaring conflict and voted for his wife’s legislation anyway.
TOTAL IMPACT? CAN’T SAY
A pair of outsiders helped shape the Amendment 4 fiscal narrative. The House hired and assigned to the panel Rachel Greszler, a researcher at the Thomas A. Roe Institute.
The institute is part of the Heritage Foundation, producer of Project 2025, the blueprint for a possible second Donald Trump administration. Project 2025 envisions a Christian nationalist society without abortion.
The second outsider was Chris Spencer, DeSantis’s envoy to the panel. Spencer is executive director of the State Board of Administration, manager of the Florida Retirement System and other massive trusts.
On July 29 the Supreme Court put the Floridians Protecting Freedom case on a fast track. It’s running up against a 75-day pre-election deadline the Legislature set for the court.
If by Aug. 22 there’s no ruling discarding the fiscal impact statement, it will be “deemed approved” and all pending challenges will be dismissed.
So the Legislature set a deadline that may let the House Speaker and Senate President slide. Letting the clock run out would also save the Supreme Court from having to make a controversial decision.
Assuming the disputed financial statement reaches the Nov. 5 ballot, the Amendment 4 campaign could stress its conclusion: “Because the fiscal impact of increased abortions on state and local revenues and costs cannot be estimated with precision, the total impact of the proposed amendment is indeterminate.”
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