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floridians protecting freedom
FCC Chair Rebukes DeSantis-Run Florida for Threatening TV Station Over Abortion Ad
Another critic said that "this is the latest proof that there is no limit to how low DeSantis will stoop to censor free speech and punish dissent."
Oct 09, 2024
Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel on Tuesday called out a Florida agency for threatening a Tampa NBC affiliate with prosecution for airing an advertisement in support of a state abortion rights proposal on the November ballot.
"The right of broadcasters to speak freely is rooted in the First Amendment," Rosenworcel said in a statement. "Threats against broadcast stations for airing content that conflicts with the government's views are dangerous and undermine the fundamental principle of free speech."
Floridians Protecting Freedom's ad is designed to build support for Amendment 4, which if approved by voters next month would alter the Florida Constitution to outlaw pre-viability prohibitions on abortion care, including Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' six-week ban, which took effect earlier this year and has already been shown to harm patients.
The 30-second ad features a Tampa resident who was diagnosed with brain cancer while pregnant. Caroline, who already had one child at the time, says that "the doctors knew if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom."
"Florida has now banned abortion even in cases like mine," explains Caroline, who received abortion care in 2020, before the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade and enabled bans like the one signed by DeSantis. "Amendment 4 is gonna protect women like me. We have to vote yes."
Florida journalist Jason Garcia revealed Monday that last week, John Wilson, general counsel at the state Department of Health (DOH), wrote to WFLA-TV vice president and general manager Mark Higgins, claiming that the ad contains information that is "categorically false" and constitutes a "sanitary nuisance," which could lead to criminal proceedings if it is not removed.
As HuffPost reported Tuesday:
It's unclear if the agency only sent the letter to the NBC affiliate, or to others as well. Either way, a threat like this could have a chilling effect on publicly advocating for the pro-choice measure, just weeks away from when it will be in front of voters. Florida's Department of Health did not respond to HuffPost's request for comment.
The sanitary nuisance law is meant to curb conditions that can threaten or impair Floridians' health. It normally pertains to issues like overflowing septic tanks and problematic garbage disposals.
Attorneys for Floridians Protecting Freedom swiftly sent a letter to WFLA leaders, arguing that the DOH interjection "raises serious First Amendment concerns—indeed, it reflects an unconstitutional attempt to coerce the station into censoring protected speech," and "the advertisement is true."
The DOH letter "vaguely outlines the limited instances where abortions are allowed in Florida but fails to provide any evidence showing that Caroline's statements are false," the lawyers wrote. "Caroline was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer when she was 20 weeks pregnant; the diagnosis was terminal."
Florida's ban has limited exceptions for abortions after six weeks—before many people even know they are pregnant. In cases of rape and incest, patients can receive care up to 15 weeks, if they can manage the burdensome paperwork. Abortions to protect the health or life of a pregnant person require two physicians to assert in writing that such care is necessary.
"The only instances where the Agency for Health Care Administration has provided guidance that abortions are permitted after six-weeks' gestation are when there is an immediate threat to the pregnant person's life," the lawyers noted. "Caroline's diagnosis was terminal. Practically, that means that an abortion would not have saved her life, only extended it. Florida law would not allow an abortion in this instance."
The group of attorneys is far from alone in criticizing the Florida DOH's attempt to get the ad off the air. Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told Popular Information that the department's letter stretches "the meaning of sanitary nuisance beyond recognition."
"Terr told Popular Information that even if the ad was false and violated Florida's sanitary nuisance law, the enforcement of the law against a political ad would be unconstitutional," the outlet added. "Terr notes that the First Amendment contains 'no general exception for false speech or misinformation, and that's because of the danger of the government having a general power to dictate what is true or false, especially when it comes to political speech.'"
As Slate's Mark Joseph Stern reported Monday:
Rebecca Tushnet, a professor at Harvard Law School and a First Amendment specialist, told me that the DeSantis administration's threat is "about as blatant a violation of the First Amendment as you'll see."
Jennifer Safstrom, director of the First Amendment Clinic at Vanderbilt Law School, condemned the administration's letter as an unconstitutional "weaponization of state law to suppress speech" that's "designed to have a chilling effect on advocates during a time critical to voter outreach." Alexander Tsesis, a professor at the Florida State University College of Law, said it seemed "absurd to threaten prosecution," and pointed out that stations' own "editorial decisions" are protected by the First Amendment. Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor at Stetson Law, called the incident yet another episode in DeSantis' "long recent history of violating the First Amendment with abandon."
Seth Stern, director of advocacy of Freedom of the Press Foundation, similarly said in a Wednesday statement that "this is the latest proof that there is no limit to how low DeSantis will stoop to censor free speech and punish dissent."
"It comes on the heels of his efforts to rewrite defamation law to make it easier for the rich and powerful to bankrupt their critics, his Stop WOKE Act stunt, and other similarly unconstitutional nonsense," Stern noted. "A governor who is confident in his policies and secure in his leadership would welcome debate and correct statements he believes are misleading rather than trying to weaponize trash disposal laws against the free press."
"But DeSantis is not that governor. His administration's conduct would be silly if it weren't such a transparent bully tactic," he added. "Floridians care about the First Amendment, which is why DeSantis' outrageous censorship campaigns keep failing. We hope the news outlets he targets will not only ignore him but loudly shame him."
The governor has come under fire for various actions throughout the fight for Amendment 4. As Garcia highlighted on social media, while targeting Caroline's ad, "the DeSantis administration is running taxpayer-funded television commercials attacking Amendment 4 on ESPN, CNN, Fox News, The Weather Channel, and more."
The ads are part of what the ACLU of Florida has called an "unconstitutional misinformation campaign," which also includes a government website. Additionally, as Common Dreams reported last month, multiple state residents have had law enforcement come to their homes to confirm that they signed the petition to get Amendment 4 on the ballot.
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'Not Sick Enough Yet': Report Details Harms of Florida Abortion Ban
For one patient, doctors "had to wait for her creatinine to bump and her kidneys to be about to fail" before they could even offer her abortion care.
Sep 17, 2024
As new reporting on Amber Nicole Thurman's death highlights the dangers of Georgia Republicans' six-week abortion ban, a human rights group on Tuesday released a research brief about how a similar policy in a neighboring state "harms the health and safety of Florida patients while obstructing clinicians from providing basic reproductive and maternal medical care."
The Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) report, Delayed and Denied: How Florida's Abortion Ban Criminalizes Medical Care, focuses on the prohibition that was signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis last year but didn't take effect until May, following a state Supreme Court ruling.
The PHR brief follows late May reporting on how wait times soared at abortion clinics in the states closest to Florida after its ban took effect and the Guttmacher Institute's findings from last week that the law led to a "substantial drop" in clinician-provided abortions across the state, in part because many people don't even know they are pregnant until after six weeks.
"Florida clinicians shared harrowing accounts of how routine medical care has been delayed, denied, and deviated from standards of care."
This summer, PHR interviewed 25 of Florida's reproductive healthcare providers about their experiences caring for pregnant patients under the six-week ban. Brief co-author Dr. Michele Heisler said in a Tuesday statement that "Florida clinicians shared harrowing accounts of how routine medical care has been delayed, denied, and deviated from standards of care."
"Not only abortion care but miscarriage and broader maternal healthcare have suffered gravely due to the state's ban," noted Heisler, PHR's medical director and a professor of internal medicine and public health at the University of Michigan.
"Our research brief sheds new light on the health and rights crisis fueled by Florida's abortion ban—on patients, providers, and the medical system as a whole," she said. "Under the state's abortion ban, Floridians have lost their reproductive autonomy."
One Florida doctor in private practice told PHR that "with the six-week ban, I would say it is more like the inability to really offer anything at all now. I mean, we see patients for their new obstetrician-gynecologist visits usually around eight weeks, and sometimes we see them earlier, if they are having bleeding or other issues where we end up scanning them earlier."
"But I do not think I have ever had a viable pregnancy that was less than six weeks that I could offer a termination," the OB-GYN said. "They are never less than six weeks, so it is essentially impossible. By the time we see them for their first visit, that option is already gone."
Florida's ban technically allows some abortions after six weeks—in cases of rape and incest, or to protect the health of the pregnant person—though medical professionals and reproductive rights advocates often point out that many patients are still denied legal care even with the limited "exceptions" in place.
Before the current law, Floridians were living under a 15-week ban, which took effect in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority reversing Roe v. Wade with its June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling.
One doctor who spoke with PHR recalled a story from that period: "I strongly remember a patient who had severe kidney disease and was admitted to the hospital and was teetering on the edge of that 15 weeks. I think she was 14 weeks or so, and she got admitted, and we were trying to figure out how best to help her. She was getting sicker and sicker."
"[We] had to bring it to the head people of the hospital and be like, 'What are we allowed to do?' And they were like, 'She is not sick enough yet.' And we had to wait for her to get sicker before we were even allowed to offer her termination. And she was past 15 weeks at that point," the OB-GYN explained.
"I think it took over two weeks for us to get an answer from the hospital administrators," the doctor added. "So that hit very strongly, because it was kind of insane that we had to wait for her to become sicker. We had to wait for her creatinine to bump and her kidneys to be about to fail before we were allowed to even offer her [termination]. Then we had to jump through so many hoops to be able to do it. It really changed everything that we did in our practice."
The report features several other stories of patient and provider frustrations and the dangers created by the six-week ban.
"The findings of PHR's research brief demonstrate the need to remove Florida's extreme abortion ban and restore access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare in the state," argued Payal Shah, brief co-author and the group's director of advocacy, legal, and research. "Both patients and providers are trapped in an unworkable legal landscape."
"Despite state health agency statements to the contrary, the state's abortion ban is an egregious intrusion on patient autonomy that is causing medical harm," Shah added. "The ban's criminal penalties and narrow, vague exceptions have compelled clinicians to deviate from established standards of care and medical ethics. These impacts constitute violations of Floridians' human rights."
Florida voters will soon have an opportunity to restore much broader access to abortion care. This November, they can vote "yes" on Amendment 4, a state constitutional amendment backed by Floridians Protecting Freedom that would enshrine the right to abortion before viability in Florida.
Former President Donald Trump, a Florida resident and the Republican nominee facing Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the battle for the White House, confirmed last month that he plans to vote "no" on the ballot measure. In response, Harris said that "I trust women to make their own healthcare decisions and believe the government should never come between a woman and her doctor... The choice in this election is clear."
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'Unhinged and Undemocratic': Florida Cops Question Abortion Petition Signers
"This is what state-authorized election interference looks like," said the ACLU of Florida.
Sep 06, 2024
Floridians and reproductive rights advocates responded with alarm on Friday to Tampa Bay Times reporting that Florida law enforcement officers have been sent to the homes of multiple voters who signed a petition to get an abortion rights measure on the November ballot.
While Isaac Menasche told the newspaper that he isn't sure which agency the plainclothes officer who came to his home is with, fellow Lee County resident Becky Castellanos said Florida Department of Law Enforcement Officer Gary Negrinelli showed his badge and gave his card.
Both visits were about potential fraud related to the petition for Amendment 4, which would outlaw pre-viability abortion bans in Florida. Menasche was asked if he signed the petition, which he had. Negrinelli inquired about Castellanos' relative, who also signed the petition.
"This is pure voter intimidation, just like with the 'election police' in 2022. It's Gestapo tactics."
The officer inquiries appear "to be part of a broad—and unusual—effort by Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration to inspect thousands of already verified and validated petitions for Amendment 4 in the final two months before Election Day," the Times reported.
The Republican governor signed the state's six-week ban that would end if the ballot measure passes. He has also faced criticism for creating an Office of Election Crimes and Security, whose work has led to the arrest of Floridians who believed they were legally allowed to vote following the passage of a referendum that restored voting rights to many people with past felony convictions.
As the Times detailed Friday:
Since last week, DeSantis' secretary of state has ordered elections supervisors in at least four counties to send to Tallahassee at least 36,000 petition forms already deemed to have been signed by real people. Since the Times first reported on this effort, Alachua and Broward counties have confirmed they also received requests from the state.
One 16-year supervisor said the request was unprecedented. The state did not ask for rejected petitions, which have been the basis for past fraud cases.
While Department of State spokesperson Ryan Ash said the agency has "uncovered evidence of illegal conduct with fraudulent petitions" and "we have a duty to seek justice for Florida citizens who were victimized," a representative for the coalition behind Amendment 4 criticized the state effort.
"This is very clearly a fishing expedition," ACLU of Florida spokesperson Keisha Mulfort, whose group is part of Floridians Protecting Freedom, told the Times. "It is more important than ever for Floridians to reject these authoritarian tactics and vote yes on Amendment 4 in November."
Promoting the report on social media, the ACLU of Florida added, "This is what state-authorized election interference looks like."
Democrats in the state were similarly critical. Florida state Rep. Anna V. Eskamani (D-42) shared a social media post in which Menasche described feeling "shaken" and "troubled" by the encounter with the officer.
"This is unhinged and undemocratic behavior being pushed by DeSantis and his cronies in an effort to continue our state's near total abortion ban," said Eskamani. "It's clear voter intimidation and plain corruption—continue to call it out and fight back. Vote @yes4florida and spread the word."
Responding to Eskamani, Pamela Castellana, chair of the Brevard Democratic Executive Committee, said: "This literally took my breath away. This is pure voter intimidation, just like with the 'election police' in 2022. It's Gestapo tactics. If you live in Florida you know. If you don't—please help me get the word out. Stop authoritarianism."
Journalist Jessica Valenti argued Friday that Republicans "don't care that voters want abortion rights restored—and if they need to dismantle democracy to keep it banned, so be it."
"We've seen lots of Republican attacks on pro-choice ballot measures—but what makes this one especially insidious is that it's trying to gaslight Americans into thinking that voters don't really want abortion rights restored, but that the overwhelming support is fabricated," she added.
In addition to raising concerns about the fraud allegations, Amendment 4 supporters are outraged over the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration on Thursday launching a webpage claiming that the ballot measure "threatens women's safety."
Florida Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book (D-35) pledged that she is looking into "appropriate legal action," while Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement that "this kind of propaganda issued by the state, using taxpayer money and operating outside of the political process, sets a dangerous precedent."
"This is what we would expect to see from an authoritarian regime," added Jackson, "not in the so-called 'Free State of Florida.'"
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