DeSantis deploys government resources to fight Florida abortion amendment

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Florida Republican leaders have repeatedly tapped into taxpayer-funded resources to fight a November ballot initiative that would overturn the state's six-week abortion ban.

Their repeated efforts — from a state-run website attacking the amendment to election police questioning signers of the petition to get the measure on the ballot — have drawn them into a protracted legal fight with the campaign behind the initiative, which will appear before voters as Amendment 4.

It is an escalation of government overreach, amendment supporters say, as part of an all-out effort by Republicans to protect the six-week abortion ban that DeSantis signed into law while he was preparing to run for president. They charge that the state government is violating the law — while DeSantis and his allies strenuously defend their actions as merely educating the public and protecting Floridians.

“What we are witnessing is a disturbing pattern of government interference — not only in women's healthcare but also in the very democratic process itself,” ACLU of Florida spokesperson Keisha Mulfort wrote in an email. “This authoritarian overreach is deeply dangerous and has real, life-threatening consequences for women across Florida.”

The sides will square off in court soon on one of those fronts. The ACLU of Florida and the Southern Legal Counsel asked a Leon County Circuit Court judge to shut down a website posted by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration — which regulates the state’s 50 licensed abortion clinics — claiming the initiative, if approved by voters in November, would expose women and children to health risks.

Amendment 4 would abolish the state’s ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, and proponents of the measure believe it would bring Florida back to standards established under Roe v. Wade , which the Supreme Court struck down more than two years ago.

DeSantis argues Amendment 4 would wipe out dozens of state abortion regulations, including a provision allowing only doctors to perform abortions, and others limiting late-term procedures and requiring parental consent for minors. He also said the language of the measure is broad and ambiguously written, leaving the courts effectively in charge of establishing laws rather than the Legislature.

“Why would you want to take power away from the people of the state to determine their own destiny and transfer it to members of the judiciary?” DeSantis said during a Monday radio talk show in Fort Myers hosted by outgoing Republican state Rep. Spencer Roach. “It just doesn’t make any sense to do it.”

A spokesperson for DeSantis did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Proponents of the amendment have dismissed DeSantis’ charges as distractions trying to scare voters.

“If you don’t want to talk about an abortion ban that has no real exceptions, that is criminally harming women, you talk about distractions,” Lauren Brenzel, the campaign director in support of the amendment, said on a call with reporters last week.

As for the AHCA website, DeSantis said the agency regularly publishes public service announcements that inform residents about changes to laws and rules. The agency also joined up with the Florida Association of Broadcasters to release 30-second advertisements highlighting the state’s current abortion laws, although it’s not clear if — or where — the PSAs may have aired.

In addition, a special state police force, created by DeSantis two years ago, began investigating claims that some of the more than 891,000 voter-signed petitions that qualified the measure for the ballot were fraudulent. The Tampa Bay Times and others reported that law enforcement had shown up at some voters’ homes to question them about the validity of their signatures on the petitions.

The state Democratic Party has asked for a criminal investigation into the AHCA website. It is also facing another lawsuit, which was filed by a South Florida lawyer with the state Supreme Court. The complaint accuses DeSantis, state Attorney General Ashley Moody and AHCA Secretary Jason Weida of abusing state powers to fight Amendment 4. The high court has expedited the case, asking lawyers from the state to respond by Sept. 23.

The legal fight over Amendment 4 began when Moody, a Republican, recommended that the state Supreme Court reject the abortion initiative for the ballot. The court — which is made up of a majority of DeSantis’ appointees — denied Moody’s request in April, clearing Amendment 4 for the November election.

Amendment supporters and Florida Republicans have also clashed over a financial statement that will be placed next to the measure on the ballot. Lawyers from Moody’s office fought a lawsuit seeking to force a revision to the statement and lost. While that was under appeal, Senate President Kathleen Passidomo and House Speaker Paul Renner, both Republicans, voluntarily called for the panel of economists who craft the statement to convene and review a statement that had been published before the six-week abortion ban took effect.

But rather than summon a meeting of the same group of mostly apolitical budget experts who initially drafted the financial statement last year, before the six-week ban went into effect, Renner replaced a House finance committee staff director with a research fellow from the right-leaning and anti-abortion Heritage Foundation. DeSantis chose to send his longtime budget adviser, who brought in an anti-abortion professor from the Catholic University of America as an adviser.

The resulting financial statement tells voters that Amendment 4 may force the state to pay for abortions through Medicaid and lead to an economic downturn and higher regulatory costs. Those points were among the revisions that were requested by the DeSantis budget adviser and the Heritage research fellow before the updated financial statement was finalized this summer.

The Florida Supreme Court subsequently denied a request made by the Amendment 4 campaign to reject the revised statement.

“That provides some clarity when a voter sees that,” DeSantis said of the financial statement during a discussion earlier this month at a church in Tallahassee. “That is not a partisan organization providing that information, that is going to be on the ballot that you actually read.”

Amendment 4 will share the ballot with GOP presidential nominee and Florida registered voter Donald Trump, who announced in late August that he will vote against Amendment 4. The amendment will need at least 60 percent of the vote in order to pass, which means it will need plenty of support from GOP voters.

But rather than actively campaign against the measure, like DeSantis, Trump has tried to distance himself from his adopted home state’s abortion policies. He says he opposes the six-week ban and pilloried DeSantis for it when the two were primary rivals. And he demurred when asked if he would support a national abortion ban during a recent debate with Kamala Harris.

DeSantis has complained that not enough Republicans have spoken publicly against the abortion initiative. During the Monday talk show with Roach, he said many are failing promises they made as candidates.

“You have this amendment, which is the one that would make Florida one of the most radical abortion jurisdictions in the world, and yet you have people that won't even say that they're going to vote no on it,” DeSantis said. “Forget about actually putting in some sweat to say this shouldn't be in the constitution — actually going out and doing something about it."

"They won't even say that,” DeSantis said.