Roe V. Wade Overturned: What It Means In Florida

FLORIDA — The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade Friday could mean that millions of American women, including Floridians, no longer have access to safe, legal abortions.

The court's 6-3 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a repudiation of the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and a subsequent case on fetal liability, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, was expected. In May, Justice Samuel Alito Jr.’s majority opinion draft was leaked to Politico, setting the stage for a seismic shift in abortion rights.

With Roe overturned, Florida was one of the states likely to ban abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights research and policy group. The state Legislature previously attempted to pass both a 20-week and a six-week abortion ban in 2021.

Republicans in the Sunshine State have already indicated they’re open to a total ban on abortion. State Rep. Webster Barnaby (R-Deltona) told Politico in May that he planned to sponsor a bill banning all abortions in Florida.

“We now have the political will to get things done that nine months ago we may not have gotten done,” Barnaby said. “And I believe that we now have the will and we have the votes in the House to pass legislation that will ban abortion in the great state of Florida for life.”

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• Abortion Ban Likely In FL If Roe V. Wade Is Overturned
• Florida's 15-Week Abortion Ban Faces Lawsuit From Abortion Providers

At least 26 states were certain or likely to make it nearly impossible for a woman to get a procedure that was legal for her mother, grandmother or even great-grandmother, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

With the decision, abortion would be illegal or nearly impossible to get in about half of U.S. states, including large swaths of the South, Midwest and Northern Plains.

Abortion is already illegal or soon will be in 13 states with pre-existing “trigger” laws banning abortion set to take effect with the dismantling of Roe and Casey, and another four are poised to ban it, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Nine have so-called fetal heartbeat laws that make the procedure illegal before many women know they are pregnant.

In April, Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law House Bill 5, called the Reducing Fetal and Infant Mortality Act. The 15-week abortion ban, which takes effect July 1, doesn't grant exemptions for rape, incest or human trafficking.

"House Bill 5 protects babies in the womb who have beating hearts, who can move, who can taste, who can see, and who can feel pain," DeSantis said about the new law. "Life is a sacred gift worthy of our protection, and I am proud to sign this great piece of legislation, which represents the most significant protections for life in the state's modern history."

Health care providers that offer abortion services have partnered with the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Florida, Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the law firm Jenner & Block to file a lawsuit challenging House Bill 5.

"This law blatantly rejects Floridians' need for essential abortion care and their strong support for the right to get an abortion. Not only does HB5 defy the will of the people, it ignores the real-life circumstances of people who need an abortion and deliberately puts them in harm's way. With the U.S. Supreme Court threatening to take away the federal right to abortion, we will do everything in our power to block this cruel attack on Floridians' fundamental right to get the care they need," said Daniel Tilley, legal director for ACLU of Florida.

Abortion rights were long considered settled law, and even as conservative states pushed at-the-time unconstitutional fetal heartbeat laws and others restricting abortion access to bring the court to this moment, many legal scholars doubted a right that generations of women and men had counted on was in serious jeopardy.

The case that made it to a full hearing before the court, Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion, came after then-President Donald Trump appointed three conservative judges — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and, a few months before his term ended, Amy Coney Barrett, who replaced liberal stalwart Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September 2020.

The court heard oral arguments on the Mississippi case in December.

Lawyers for the state of Mississippi had proposed an array of mechanisms to uphold the 15-week abortion ban but said the court ultimately should overturn the "egregiously wrong" Roe and Casey rulings.

If the court "does not impose a substantial obstacle to 'a significant number of women' seeking abortions," the state argued at the time, the justices should reinterpret the "undue burden" standard established in Roe and give the state the authority to "prohibit elective abortions before viability" of the fetus.