The Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday will hold a hearing that could help determine the future of abortion rights in the state.
The Supreme Court will consider whether to approve the wording of a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at ensuring abortion rights. If justices sign off, the proposal will go on the November ballot — and possibly touch off the state’s biggest political fight of the year.
The political committee Floridians Protecting Freedom, which launched the amendment drive in May, has submitted enough petition signatures to get on the ballot. But the Supreme Court must review ballot initiatives to make sure they comply with legal standards such as being clear to voters.
The ballot summary of the abortion measure says in part: “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.”
Get South Florida local news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC South Florida newsletters.
"None of us are judges or politicians — we are doctors and we believe that medical decisions should, and need to be made by patients along with their trusted physicians," said Dr. Mona Mangat, the chair of the Committee to Protect Health Care.
Attorney General Ashley Moody and other opponents have raised a series of objections to the proposal’s wording, including contending that the word “viability” can have multiple meanings.
In an October brief, Moody described the measure as an effort to “hoodwink” voters and said the ballot summary is part of an “overall design to lay ticking time bombs that will enable abortion proponents later to argue that the amendment has a much broader meaning than voters would ever have thought.”
"The Florida constitution is very clear on citizen initiatives, and on citizen initiatives, the language must be clear and precise, and it can only address one subject, that is the single subject rule, and we believe that on both grounds this petition is defective," said Anthony Verdugo of the Christian Family Coalition.
But Floridians Protecting Freedom fired back in a November brief, saying the meaning of the word “viability” in the context of abortion has long been understood and that voters “can be trusted to know what it would mean to live in a world limiting government interference with abortion before viability.”
Floridians Protecting Freedom announced its initiative after the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis last spring approved a law that could prevent abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. The six-week limit is contingent on the outcome of a legal battle about a 15-week abortion limit that DeSantis and lawmakers passed in 2022. The 15-week case also is pending at the Florida Supreme Court.
