What most said couldn’t be done, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) did. Under the Republican governor’s leadership, Florida became the first state to defeat a multimillion-dollar abortion industry ballot measure since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The demise of the state’s pro-abortion Amendment 4 is a momentous victory for life in Florida and for our entire country.
It will serve as a recipe for all pro-life politicians on how to defeat the Left’s heavily funded abortion lies. Every Republican leader should take note of DeSantis’s unwavering leadership on this important issue and should follow his example on how directly, and with conviction, to fight back against Big Abortion.
The truth is, when leaders courageously speak up for the truth and expose the lies, people around them are empowered to act, and vote, according to their convictions. Which is exactly what Florida voters confirmed when they rejected pro-abortion Amendment 4 at the ballot box on Election Day.
Like many similarly dangerous and deceptively worded ballot initiatives pushed across the nation, Amendment 4 threatened to replace Florida’s six-week abortion protection, which helps safeguard more than 50,000 lives each year, with a permissive measure to enshrine no-limits abortion into the state’s Constitution. By rejecting Amendment 4, Floridians saved their state from being crowned an abortion tourist destination for late-term abortions in the seventh, eighth, and even ninth months of pregnancy. This is long after the point at which children in the womb can feel the excruciating pain of abortion.
Voters also said “no” to the measure’s hidden requirement that taxpayers fund abortions at any time and for any reason. And they rejected the amendment’s ability to eliminate Florida’s parental consent law, which protects minors from being coerced into unwanted abortions.
This victory for life is remarkable given the intensity with which abortion activists poured many millions into the effort to ram their extreme abortion policy into the Florida Constitution. Backed by out-of-state funding from far-left organizations, including the Washington, D.C.-based Open Society Action Fund, abortion activists burned more than $110 million on losing Amendment 4.
The legacy media went to bat for the measure, too, in a desperate attempt to convince mothers and their families, the majority of whom oppose abortion past 15 weeks, that no-limits abortion is the only solution to the challenges of pregnancy. The media willingly broadcast this deception while ignoring alternative resources provided to women by the vast national network of more than 3,000 pregnancy resource centers. Fortunately, Floridians saw through their false rhetoric.
The abortion proponents’ failure to codify Amendment 4 into the Constitution speaks volumes about DeSantis’s stalwart efforts to educate and empower all people to stand up against the lies and barbarism the measure sought to advance. He fundraised effectively to expose the amendment’s radical provisions and traveled up and down the state to ensure that voters knew just how dangerous and far-reaching the constitutional amendment would be.
At an October press conference, DeSantis rightly condemned Amendment 4 for its intentionally deceptive language, remarking that “it’s interesting because it’s written with no definitions” and highlighting abortion activists’ lies “about Florida policies and laws about respecting life, both the life of the mother and the health of the mother, of course, but also the life of the child.”
DeSantis’s Agency for Health Care Administration even launched a public awareness campaign to combat the dangerous lies and misinformation embedded in ads by the abortion industry, which frightened women into thinking that they would no longer be able to receive essential miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy care.
DeSantis’s actions in defense of life should inspire lawmakers and leaders at every level of government to follow his lead and stand tall in defense of the most vulnerable among us.
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DeSantis was faced with a herculean task of taking on the limitlessly funded outsider abortion lobby, but he prevailed. He stood, alongside doctors and even former abortionists, to expose the amendment’s lies that put women’s health and safety at risk. He stepped to the front lines and rallied everyone around him to fight.
Most importantly, thanks to his bold leadership and his rallying of Floridians across the state, more than 50,000 babies with beating hearts remain protected in Florida.
Marjorie Dannenfelser is president of SBA Pro-Life America.