TALLAHASSEE, FL – Today, the House Judiciary Committee voted 13-7 in favor of a bill, HB 1429, which would ban the most common method of second-trimester abortion and interfere with a woman’s access to safe and legal abortion.
Responding to today’s committee vote, ACLU of Florida legislative counsel Kara Gross stated:
“HB 1429 allows legislators to dictate what medical procedures doctors can perform. It prohibits physicians from providing their patients with the medically appropriate care that in their best judgment is needed, and would force doctors to perform medical procedures that place a woman’s health at greater risk.
“Under this bill, it would be a third-degree felony, and up to five years in prison, for doctors to conduct this legal and medically safe procedure for women seeking an abortion during their second trimester. Politicians, especially those with absolutely no medical training, let alone any obstetrical expertise, should not dictate which procedures doctors can and should perform on women. Medical experts and major medical organizations like the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists oppose these bills because they interfere with a woman’s access to safe medical care and put women’s health in jeopardy.
“This bill tramples on women’s rights to access the safest and most commonly used method of abortion during the second trimester. Similar bills enacted in other states have been challenged and enjoined or found unconstitutional. Every time the legislature enacts unconstitutional laws, it is the Florida taxpayers who foot the bill in litigation costs. Florida taxpayers don’t want to have to keep paying for the legislature’s insistence on passing unconstitutional legislation."