A Florida trial court allowed a pro-life law to go into effect Friday mandating that abortion clinics and doctors require mothers to wait 24 hours before they abort their unborn baby.
Gainesville Woman Care had attempted to temporarily block the law to keep what proponents call mandatory âreflection periodsâ from going into effect.
âIf you are going to describe abortion as medicine, then you have to have informed consent,â Carolyn McDonnell, staff counsel at Americans United For Life, told The Daily Wire in an interview. âAny medical procedure requires informed consent and reflection periods are a part of that.â
âFor example, it takes 24 hours to terminate parental rights, three days to get a marriage license, and 20 days to get a divorce,â she said.
The court had indicated on March 23 that it would grant the motion to begin enforcing the 24-hour waiting period. Gainesville Woman Care, the abortion provider challenging the law, had filed a motion to stay. The court denied it.
The 24-hour waiting period law was enacted in 2015. It strengthened preexisting informed consent provisions in the Womenâs Right to Know Act by requiring that the abortionist or the referring physician make âinformed consent disclosuresâ to the mother âat least 24 hours before the procedureâ except in life-threatening emergencies, the court order says.
âAs the United States Supreme Court has acknowledged,â the order says âwhether to have an abortion poses âa difficult and painful moral decision,â and women who regret that decision may experience âregret,â âsevere depression,â âloss of esteem,â âgrief,â and âsorrow.'â
Abortion supporters, the order says, had argued that the 24-hour waiting period âimpinges on the womenâs right of privacy.â
But Florida argued that the law was to protect women from pressure by abortion doctors and failures by the abortion industry to âgive women the necessary time to consider the important informed consent disclosures.â
The state also argued that abortion providers, the plaintiffs, âgenerate income from providing abortions and generate more profits if they can do those abortions without a 24-hour waiting period.â
FL is now a 24 hour mandatory delay state meaning that in order to access an abortion you have to make at least 2 trips to a health center 24 hours apart. Walk past protesters 2 times, find transportation support, time off work, childcare etc. & soon weâll have a 15 week ban too. pic.twitter.com/FaHGnG9GL8
â Rep. Anna V. Eskamani, PhD đ¨ (@AnnaForFlorida) April 11, 2022
âThis mandatory delay and additional trip requirement is an insult to all Floridians, but it will have particularly harsh consequences for patients with low incomes, because of the significant financial costs that HB633âs extra-trip requirement imposesâincluding missed work, lost wages, and significantly increased transportation and child care costs,â the ACLU of Florida said in a March press release after the court indicated it would rule for the State.
âThe law also jeopardizes patientsâ health and undermines the privacy of Floridiansâ abortion decisions,â the progressive organization added.
The pro-life win comes as Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis preps to sign a bill that bans abortions after 15 weeks in the state of Florida. The state currently allows abortion up until 24 weeks.