Florida
Florida suspends bill seeking to allow lawsuits over fetuses’ deaths after IVF ruling
By Arek Sarkissian, Politico
A Florida Republican senator this week said she has sidelined a bill that seeks to add fetuses to wrongful death lawsuits amid ongoing concern from Democrats that the legislation was an attempt to grant personhood to fetuses.
FL measure establishing personhood in the womb is faltering as Legislature winds down
By Jackie Llanos, Florida Phoenix
Related: Passidomo has doubts on wrongful death proposal covering fetuses in the womb
An effort to allow expecting parents to collect damages in a wrongful death suit of an unborn child is in peril as the Senate sponsor of the bill temporarily postponed it on Monday and indicated it needed more work — though the legislative session of 2024 is coming to an end.
A law professor breaks down the impact on Florida’s legislative process after Alabama IVF ruling
By Cathy Carter, WUSF Tampa
WUSF’s Cathy Carter spoke with Stetson University law professor Louis Virelli about how the controversial ruling in Alabama has sidelined the Florida bill that would allow civil lawsuits over the wrongful death of a fetus.
DeSantis, his Supreme Court and hard-right Legislature keep Florida on track to abolish abortion
By Noreen Marcus, Florida Bulldog
No reasonable access to abortion in Florida, unthinkable just five years ago, now seems inevitable.
National Democrats erect billboards raising fear about disappearing reproductive rights
By Anne Geggis, Florida Politics
Legislation that critics believe would have restricted in vitro fertilization in Florida hit a dead-end Monday, but national Democrats are erecting billboards to remind Floridians how Republicans want to keep rolling back reproductive rights.
Legislature must address Black maternal health crisis in post-Roe era
By Crishelle Bailey, Tallahassee Democrat
Almost two years have passed since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and Floridians are suffering.
The voices of Black Floridians must be heard on reproductive rights
By Dawnyelle Singleton, Sarasota Herald-Tribune
My name is Dawnyelle Singleton. I’m a community advocate, former administrator and one of the 25% of women in the United States who has had (or will have) an abortion in their lifetime.
Illinois, Florida, California saw largest increase in abortions in first 15 months after overturn of Roe v. Wade
By Nadine El-Bawab, ABC News
Illinois, Florida and California had the largest total increases in the number of abortions performed in the first 15 months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to data gathered in the WeCount report released by the Society of Family Planning on Wednesday.
Report finds that 86% of rural Florida hospitals no longer deliver babies
By Rick Mayer, Health News Florida
A new report has found that the majority of Florida rural hospitals do not provide labor and delivery services.
Declaring fetuses to be people would crush abortion rights in Florida
Editorial, South Florida Sun Sentinel
Floridians are already alarmed about women losing the right to control their own bodies, but what’s happening at the state Capitol is even more terrifying.
National
Republicans kill bill to protect IVF after claiming they fully support it
By David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
After the Alabama Supreme Court ruled two weeks ago that frozen embryos are “children,” causing several medical facilities to pause their in-vitro fertilization services, Republicans rushed to get ahead of the growing national outrage.
Smoke and mirrors: What Republicans are really saying about IVF
By Judd Legum, Popular Information
Related: Trump’s pick for chair of the Republican Party opposes “the destruction of human embryos”
On February 16, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are “children,” and fertility clinics that destroy frozen embryos could be sued under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.
GOP’s post-Roe peril spreads like wildfire
By Zachary Basu, Axios
Related: Frozen embryos shouldn’t be considered people, two-thirds of Americans say
Republicans are trapped in a political minefield over reproductive rights, paralyzed in fear that their vulnerabilities on abortion and in-vitro fertilization (IVF) could hand Democrats the 2024 election.
Economic effects of state abortion bans debated by U.S. Senate panel
By Jennifer Shutt, States Newsroom
U.S. senators heard detailed testimony Wednesday on the economic impacts women face and how those considerations can play into whether they seek elective abortion access.
Telehealth Abortions Continue to Rise—Even in Banned States, A New Study Shows
By Julianne McShane, Mother Jones
Telehealth abortions continue to grow in popularity, even in states where anti-abortion activists try to ban them, according to new data published today.
Researchers call for more abortion studies to be retracted
By Sofia Resnick, Florida Phoenix
Health and science experts published a commentary in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday calling for the retraction of four older abortion-related studies that, despite documented flaws, have influenced major anti-abortion decisions over the past 20 years, including the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned federal abortion rights.
Letters to the editor
Your beliefs, not your body
By L.A. Weiner, St. Petersburg, Tampa Bay Times
Those self-righteous individuals who rail against face masks and vaccines but have no problem dictating what a pregnant woman can or can’t do are the worst kind of hypocrites. Now Alabama has decided that frozen embryos are unborn children. Where does this lunacy end…Just because you believe abortion is a sin doesn’t mean you get to force your beliefs on others. Otherwise we are no different than the radical theocracies we so despise.