Florida has imposed one of the strictest abortion bans in the United States as of today, six weeks into pregnancy, in what President Joe Biden called a “nightmare” sparked by his electoral rival and predecessor Donald Trump.
Trump has bragged about how the justices he appointed to the conservative-leaning US Supreme Court will allow the country's right to abortion to be struck down in 2022, paving the way for the 21 states that have so far imposed full or partial bans. “Today, a strict abortion ban goes into effect in Florida, withholding reproductive health care before many women even know they are pregnant,” Biden said in a statement. “There is one person responsible for this nightmare: Donald Trump.”
Florida's strict new law replaces a previous 15-week ban, leaving 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 a leading voice for the campaign on abortion rights, and was in Florida today, speaking in Jacksonville. In his speech, he described the ban in Florida and 20 other states as “Trump’s abortion ban.” “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 don't care,” the vice president attacked.
Although he welcomed the Supreme Court's ruling, Trump has recently avoided the issue of abortion, due to his apparent concern about opinion polls proving him wrong on this issue. In a recent interview with Time magazine, he said that if he returned to the White House he would let states decide when asked whether he would support a federal abortion ban.
Florida — where Trump spends most of his time at his Mar-a-Lago resort — is governed by Republican Ron DeSantis. The conservative politician, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination this year, signed legislation to cut the maximum from 15 weeks to six weeks in April 2023. The Sunshine State Supreme Court rejected a recent appeal by pro-abortion groups in April, paving the way for The ban goes into effect today. But Florida voters will have the opportunity to repeal the six-week limit in a referendum coinciding with the presidential election in November.
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