National ‘Ride to Decide’ bus tour touting abortion rights comes to Florida

The "Ride to Decide" Bus parked outside the Cuban Club in Tampa on Aug. 1, 2024. (Photo by Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix)

The national abortion rights advocacy group Free & Just brought its “Ride to Decide” bus tour to the Sunshine State this week, making appearances in Miami, Orlando, and Tampa.

The bus tour kicked off in Milwaukee during the Republican National Convention last month and is hitting states up and down the East Coast and South for the next few weeks before concluding at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later in August.

“We’re doing events across the country, both community roundtables and press conferences,” said Veronica Ingham, senior campaign director for Free and Just, a national nonprofit organization focused on federal protections for abortion and expanding reproductive rights. “We really want to feature local community members who are talking about the impact of abortion bans across the country.”

The tour has already gone through Texas and Louisiana, whose legislatures have enacted total abortion bans. They are scheduled to later go to Georgia (which has a six-week ban), North Carolina (which bans abortions after 12 weeks’ gestation), Pennsylvania (24 weeks), Ohio (20 weeks) and ends in Illinois (where abortion is legal until the point of viability).

The issue of abortion was scarcely mentioned in speeches at the RNC in Milwaukee, and the official Republican Party platform developed by the Donald Trump campaign watered down the party’s historically strong stance on abortion.

This is what it says on the “Issue of Life”:

We proudly stand for families and Life. We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those Rights. After 51 years, because of us, that power has been given to the States and to a vote of the People. We will oppose Late Term Abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).

On Thursday, the Ride to Decide tour convened a roundtable discussion with a local panel of abortion rights activists at the Cuban Club in Tampa’s historic Ybor City neighborhood. They discussed a range of issues, such as how they are contending with the state’s newly implemented ban on most abortions after six weeks, with exceptions for rape, incest, and human trafficking up to 15-weeks’ gestation, although those require extensive documentation.

‘Near-total ban’

“There are no exceptions. This is a near-total abortion ban, and they do not care. We have to do everything we can to make sure the people we love are safe and able to access the health care that they need,” said Sarah Parker, executive director of Voices of Florida, a progressive group formerly called Women’s Voices of Southwest Florida, which has made itself a presence in Tallahassee during the past few legislative sessions.

“This six-week abortion ban has impacted thousands of people just in the Tampa Bay area,” said Kris Lawler, president of the Tampa Bay Abortion Fund, created in 2017 as a volunteer organization that raises money to help women get access to an abortion. “We’re doing the best we can to work with our partners — national and local — to make sure that people get the care they need.”

“A lot of people I talk to are scared,” added Bree Wallace, director for case management at Tampa Bay Abortion Fund. “They’ve never left the state. They don’t know how to fly. They live in fear. They haven’t used rideshares. And they have to travel thousands of miles now. They’re very scared about the whole process and some of them don’t even know that there’s an abortion ban in place until they come in.”

Sabrina Bousbar is running for the Democratic nomination for Congress in Florida’s 13th District in Pinellas County, now represented by Republican Anna Paulina Luna. Only 27 herself, she was asked what she would say to young people about the situation regarding abortion rights in Florida.

“You have to take that fear and turn it into fuel,” she said. “You have to make a determination. You have to get involved, so I tell young people, ‘Get involved.’ This is about the fight for reproductive health care and this is about the fight for women.”

Amendment 4, the constitutional amendment on the Nov. 5 ballot in Florida, would restore the right to an abortion until the point of viability, around 24 weeks. A poll released this week from the University of North Florida showed the measure getting more than the 60% threshold required for passage.

Polls have shown that most people in the United States believe abortion should remain legal and disapprove of the 2022 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a federal right for a woman to have an abortion.