Florida’s six-week abortion ban has come into force, closing the door - for now - on the last abortion access point in the US South.
Anti-abortion campaigners have celebrated the new legislation - which replaces an existing 15-week law - as the gold standard of abortion policy and a major victory in the country’s battle over abortion access.
But pro-choice campaigners say the ban will push an overstretched system to the brink.
They worry the new law in Florida, which had been the last state in the region without a near-total ban, will effectively cut off abortion access for more than 21 million women of reproductive age across nearly a dozen states.
“This essentially creates an abortion desert in the south-east part of our country,” said Michelle Quesada, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida. “This will be devastating.”
Sure, okay. I agree that people are being manipulated by media and that politicians have lied. Now what? Are we going to just sit and hope it corrects itself? Fixing any of the problems our country or the world are facing is going to take a multi-faceted approach across all sorts of diverse groups and ideologies banding together to shut out the unacceptable ones. Part of that approach will be voting out the conservatives where it is possible and encouraging and aiding those that are “softly” disenfranchised via misinformation or inconvenience to vote. Anything else is just giving up, and we cannot do that.