Floridas agency for health care administration, a publicly funded and purportedly nonpartisan government group, is pushing misinformation about the states abortion rights amendment that will be in front of voters in November.
Jason Weida, secretary for Floridas Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), tweeted Thursday afternoon to announce an improved transparency page to combat the lies and disinformation surrounding Floridas abortion laws. The transparency page on the government website greets viewers with a large opening statement that reads: Florida is protecting life. Dont let the fearmongers lie to you. The page alleges that current Florida law protects women while the pro-choice ballot measure, Amendment 4, threatens womens safety.
Florida currently has a six-week abortion ban a point at which the majority of people dont yet know theyre pregnant with exceptions for rape, incest, human trafficking and life of the pregnant person, although life-saving care has been delayed or denied to Florida women under the law. Amendment 4 would restore abortion access in Florida until fetal viability, or around 24 weeks, which is the same standard used in Roe v. Wade before it was repealed in 2022.
The transparency page claims that Floridas six-week abortion ban is designed to protect women from dangerous and unsanitary conditions and sets reasonable and common-sense guardrails for medical professionals and their facilities.
HuffPost spoke with nearly a dozen such providers at facilities last month who say that the current law is untenable. Doctors are forced to turn away hundreds of patients including those who didnt realize they were pregnant before the six-week mark. Providers also told HuffPost theyve had to turn away patients with fetal abnormalities in wanted pregnancies because they couldnt get approval for the procedure from two physicians, which is required by law. Many said the vague wording of the law, coupled with criminal punishments for doctors, deters physicians from signing off on necessary procedures.
The transparency page makes several false claims, including that Amendment 4 would lead to unregulated and unsafe abortions. AHCA also criticizes the amendment for not including a definition of viability a term used for decades on both state and federal levels. When Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (R) argued against the amendment during state Supreme Court hearings by saying it should include a definition of viability, conservative chief Justice Carlos Muiz responded : The people of Florida arent stupid ... they can figure this out.
The state agency also included a blatant lie that Amendment 4 eliminates parental consent for a minor who wants an abortion. In fact, the measure states that it does not change the Legislatures constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.
Our new transparency page serves to educate Floridians on the states current abortion law, and provide information on the impacts of a proposed policy change on the ballot in November, a spokesperson for AHCA told HuffPost via email.
The law is the law however many in the media have not covered it correctly, the spokesperson added, referencing several news articles about the states six-week abortion ban. All of the reports focus on how the six-week abortion ban is confusing for providers and patients, and that doctors worry about their patients ability to access necessary health care. When HuffPost asked AHCA to expand on why those specific articles are problematic, the agency did not immediately respond.
AHCA did refer HuffPost to the websites page that shows the myth vs fact of the states six-week abortion ban, which repeats some of the same anti-abortion rhetoric used on the transparency page.
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