UNITED STATES: Ron DeSantis, Florida Governor and Republican who would be running for President in 2024, has affirmed his position by signing a six-week abortion ban. This state has now ensured hard-core restrictions on the process in the United States. On Thursday, the ban was approved by the state’s House of Representatives, which is essentially Republican, by a vote of 70 to 40 and sent the bill to the governor.
Questions of the legalities of abortion were given to individual states after the overturn of Roe v. Wade in June last year, which concluded the rights to an abortion in the Constitution. In a statement on Thursday, Kara Gross, the legislative director at the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, mentioned, “The bill’s exceptions are so onerous and impracticable that they are virtually meaningless.”
“In a state that prides itself on being free, this is an unprecedented and unacceptable level of government overreach and intrusion,” Gross added.
In 2020, the Kaiser Family Foundation Health Policy Research nonprofit discovered that 74,868 legal abortions took place in Florida, making it one of the states with the highest rates of abortions in the US. Highlighting Jean-Pierre’s comments, Vice President Kamala Harris on Twitter wrote, “Let’s be clear: This law would deny women across Florida access to basic health care.”
Florida is included in 13 other states that, with the vote, also implemented similar bans on abortion at six weeks of pregnancy or before. Abortion was also banned in Florida over the past 15 weeks. This law is condemned by most people as some patients learn about their pregnancies later, after contraception.
In a statement, Joe Biden’s administration called his bill an “extreme and dangerous new abortion ban.”
Karine Jean-Pierre, White House Press Secretary, said in a statement, “The ban flies in the face of fundamental freedoms and is out of step with the views of the vast majority of the people of Florida and all of the United States.” She mentioned that this would affect patients in the neighbouring states as well.
Most polls show that the majority of Americans favour some level of access to abortion. According to a 2022 Pew Research Centre survey, 61 per cent of Americans thought abortion should be legal in most or all situations.
According to the poll, 43% of Republican self-identifiers said they were less likely to support a candidate who supported restricting access to abortion. DeSantis is regarded as a potential candidate for the 2024 presidential election. He has become one of the top Republicans in the US.
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