Until now, Florida had been considered a safe haven for abortion access. Women traveled here from more restrictive places, seeking the services of health clinics statewide.
But with two recent legal changes and the possibility of an all-out abortion ban, everything has shifted:
— A 24-hour waiting period, which formally went into effect last week, is making it more difficult to get appointments and more expensive for women who travel to Florida for the procedure.
— The July 1 deadline for a 15-week abortion ban approaches, after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law the bill that prohibits the procedure after the 15th week of pregnancy instead of 24 weeks.
— A leaked draft ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday showed that Roe v. Wade, the federal case that made abortions legal, may be overturned.
Just the possibility of this reversal has Florida abortion clinics — which were already scrambling to explain the new regulations and treat panicked patients — facing a greater sense of urgency.
“Now that this is becoming very wide national news, I think women are more aware but also more confused,” said Alexa Lane, director of the Presidential Women’s Center in West Palm Beach. “They hear murmurings and they are scared and confused.”
If the Supreme Court were to follow through and overturn Roe v. Wade, a number of states likely would ban abortion quickly, if not immediately. Although Florida is not one of the states with a so-called “trigger law” that would allow this, it is unclear whether the political environment could make it happen.
For now, Lane said she has been spending most of her days informing pregnant women that abortion is still legal in Florida.
What’s happening now
Those who run Florida women’s health clinics say the 24-hour waiting period, which requires patients to wait a full day after their initial doctor visit before undergoing an abortion, has been adding stress to an already difficult process for all concerned.
In past weeks, they’ve been seeing young women arriving at clinics after taking a day off from work, sometimes riding a bus, only to learn they can no longer walk in and end a pregnancy. Returning may mean another day of lost wages and figuring out transportation, in addition to the emotional toll, according to Joan, the director of a Fort Lauderdale clinic who asked not to be fully identified.
“It is a total nightmare for us, for the doctors, and for the patients, because they come on the first day and, when we explain what’s happening, they’re not happy,” she said. “It’s gone from one visit to two, so that’s made the clinics busier.”
Dr. Samantha Deans, associate medical director of Planned Parenthood of Southeast and North Florida, said doctors weren’t expecting the 24-hour waiting period when a circuit judge ruled on it April 12.
“Overnight, we were required to start mandating a 24-hour waiting period. Our patients went from thinking they were coming in for their abortion appointment to being told we had to book them on two separate days, 24 hours apart,” she said. “The waiting period increases the challenges of navigating access to care, scheduling additional days off work, travel, child care — the cost associated with all of that is significantly impacting our patients since that took effect.”
Other states with 24-hour waiting periods allow the first appointment to be done through the phone or telehealth. Not Florida, Deans said.
That’s also a challenge for women traveling from some countries in Latin America and the Caribbean where there is an unmet need for modern contraception and abortion is illegal. Because Florida’s new rules make it more challenging to get appointments, there’s also the issue of meeting the window in which women can end a pregnancy safely.
“They may be forced to give birth to a child that they cannot afford to raise, and some women will resort to other measures like trying to self-abort, and that’s dangerous,” Lane said. “Abortion is not going to go away, and when a person needs an abortion, that person can be in a very desperate situation.”
Florida’s 15-week ban allows exceptions only if the woman’s life is considered to be in danger or if the fetus is considered to have a “fatal fetal abnormality.” There are no exceptions for rape or incest.
Dan Steiner, president of Pre Born!, a network of pregnancy centers that aim to steer women toward giving birth, said his Florida clinics are feeling a greater sense of urgency to get women in sooner and to address confusion over changes in the laws.
“Often it’s young girls, and they were not planning their pregnancies, and they aren’t necessarily up to speed on current legislative issues,” he said.
Steiner said his clinics provide options to abortion, offering ultrasounds and help with daycare or adoption. “We are empowering them to make a wise choice,” he said.
With the 15-week ban, however, women are more likely to act quicker out of fear, he said, and clinic workers need to counsel women earlier in their pregnancy, when possible.
“It can be really challenging for a woman who doesn’t know how far along she is gestationally,” he said.
Preparing for the future
For decades, Florida has permitted abortion through the final trimester of pregnancy,
Now, with the 15-week ban, women in later stages may need to travel to nearby states with later bans, such as North Carolina and Virginia. And eventually, they may need to travel even farther.
“If Roe is overturned, nearby states could go completely dark, and patients will have to look farther and farther away for abortion access,” said Deans, of Planned Parenthood.
“At this point, we cannot rest on any amount of protection that exists today,” she added. “This shows us that abortion policy will never be completely secure until we get to a place in our society where people understand this is a medical decision and not a political decision.”
South Florida attorney and activist Emma Collum said women’s rights organizations are prepared for the fallout from the 15-week ban and getting ready for what could be ahead.
“We will fund transportation should women have to leave the state. We also have been registering people to vote at any event we have,” she said. “We are angry, but there has been work that has been going on non-stop in Florida by very dedicated women organizations trying to make sure that when this decision came down, we were doing as much as humanly possible to set up our own municipal fundraising and legislative barricade against it.”
Fear has become a powerful motivator for fundraising. Fran Sachs, president of the Emergency Medical Assistance (EMA) fund based in Palm Beach County, said this week’s Roe v. Wade news had donations flooding in. The EMA fund provides financial assistance to low-income women seeking abortions.
Sachs anticipates as many as 40 percent of women who need financial assistance will be further along in their pregnancy and need to leave the state for care once the 15-week ban launches.
“Florida is not a safe haven anymore,” Sachs said. “If you just look at a map, you know all of the states above Florida are gonna be even more restrictive, so our assumption is we’re gonna be flying people hundreds of miles away.”
Sachs said her organization and others are partnering with clinics in Baltimore, North Carolina and Washington, D.C., to ensure Florida women have places to go get safe abortions. They’re communicating their anticipated volume to women’s health clinics in receiving states and strategizing how to meet potential needs — particularly if more states need to send women to those clinics, too.
Mona Reis, founder and CEO of the Presidential Women’s Clinic, said clinics in receiving states are looking at how to expand their services by adding staff and extending hours.
“I just got back from a meeting with 800 other people that are involved in the provision of care. The discussions are how are we going to get women to the states where they can access services legally? And what will be the ability for funding to help with those travel expenses?” Reis said.
Without access to abortion services, Florida women can’t continue their education, be there for their other children, walk away from an abusive relationship, or deal with a medical challenge or anomaly in the pregnancy, she said.
Many states are in the same position as Florida, with abortion laws becoming more restrictive. Texas has banned abortions after six weeks, and the Oklahoma Legislature has approved a similar prohibition. Overall, abortion bans have been introduced in 31 states this year, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a national research group.
“We are on the cusp of a reproductive health-care crisis,” Reis said. “Everyone is working together to figure this out.”
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(Sun Sentinel reporter Brooke Batinger contributed to this report.)
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