Florida Abortion Law Still on Hold as the ACLU and an Abortion Clinic Fight to Stop It

by | Jul 18, 2017


A Tallahassee judge will hear arguments, against a law the Florida Supreme Court says “would lead to irreparable harm.”

Lawyers representing an abortion clinic claim a two year old law is unconstitutional. The law, signed by Governor Rick Scott, requires that a woman must wait 24 hours before getting an abortion.

The lawyers were hired by Gainesville Woman Care and will go before Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis this Wednesday to hear arguments in the case.

Along side the Gainesville Woman Care attorneys, is the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida that argues the Supreme Court’s ruling made clear the law should have been struck down permanently.

No mandatory abortion delay in this country has ever survived strict scrutiny, and Florida’s explicit right to privacy, which is `as strong as possible,′ will not tolerate a different result,” the lawyers wrote requesting for a summary judgment.

At the time of it’s passage two years ago, a Leon County circuit judge issued a temporary injunction blocking the law. Then, in 2016, the 1st District Court of Appeal overturned that decision.

The case went to the Florida Supreme Court, and it ruled for a temporary block against the law.

The mandatory delay law impacts only those women who have already made the choice to end their pregnancies. Indeed, under Florida’s pre-existing informed consent law, a woman can already take all of the time she needs to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy, both before she arrives at the clinic and after she receives the counseling information….No other medical procedure, even those with greater health consequences, requires a 24-hour waiting period in the informed consent process,” Justice Barbara Pariente wrote on behalf of the court’s majority. “

3 Comments

  1. Jeriah Knox

    Informed consent can be about passing the buck………….If everybody is fully informed and consented for 24hrs, everybody bears the blame together. The abortion clinic can blame the woman and the woman can blame the abortion clinic, ect. You’d think the proaborts would be happy about this, but no if you want it dead now, you want it dead now.
    When does your belief system claim the child should receive human rights and be protected from big people? Should we allow the woman to drink while she decides whether to kill it or not?
    https://youtu.be/4Ka-Zg4tlLE

    • Anonymous

      Why would pro-choice be happy about this? Being pro-choice is about choice, and this law limits a patient’s choice. Having to wait 24 hours can conflict with work, travel and childcare. Even without this law, the patient would have every right to go through the lab work and counseling part of the appointment and say “I’d rather think about this some more” and leave. She can reschedule the actual abortion part of it. This was rare in my experience working as a medical assistant at an abortion clinic. Usually, by the time they make the apppintment and show up to it, they’ve made their decision, and it’s stupid to make them wait hoping they’ll change their mind to make you feel better. You, who have no say in their body or their life.

      • Jeriah Knox

        My point is that if half the nation believes it’s a human being with rights being aborted, wouldn’t those involved in the abortion want to make a show of due process? In a couple months, roe could be overturned and you don’t want to be in court, having to explain that you truly believed, with all your heart, that the baby was just like a tumor with no intrinsic value.

 

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