Florida Voters Reject Abortion Amendment: Results From 10 Ballot Initiatives on Life
Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell /
Voters in 10 states decided Tuesday either to protect life or to enshrine abortion up to birth in their constitutions.
Five largely pro-abortion states—Colorado, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, and New York—and five largely pro-life states—Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota—voted in the weeks leading up to Election Day on ballot measures to legalize unlimited abortion.
Here is a roundup of the results, with updates throughout the night.
Colorado Voters Pick Limitless Abortion
Colorado voters opted to enshrine abortion up to birth in the state Constitution.
Voters approved a ballot initiative repealing a previous measure that prohibited funding for abortion in health insurance plans and state Medicaid coverage.
Colorado currently has no restrictions on abortion and a statute already protects it.
New York OKs Pro-Abortion Measure
New Yorkers cast their ballots to expand the state’s “Equal Rights Amendment” antidiscrimination protections by including abortion.
New York already had virtually no protections for unborn life in the womb.
Pro-abortion activists have said the amendment is a “necessary bulwark” against any pro-life efforts, Politico reported.
With 29% of the vote in, 72.9% of New Yorkers voted “yes” on the pro-abortion amendment to the state Constitution.
Maryland Voters Solidify Pro-Abortion Stance
In Maryland, voters decided to protect the “right” to abortion up to birth in the state Constitution.
Maryland already had broad health exceptions for late-term abortion and a right to abortion already was protected by statute.
With almost half of the vote counted, 74.3% of Maryland voters were in favor of Question 1.
Florida to Remain a Pro-Life State
Florida’s Amendment 4 will not gain a large enough majority of voters to enshrine abortion up to birth into the state Constitution, said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican.
With 83% of the vote in, 57.4% of Florida voters cast their ballots in favor of the initiative, which would allow abortion up to the moment of birth if it is deemed “necessary to protect the patient’s health.”
A favorable vote of at least 60% was needed to make Amendment 4 part of the state Constitution.
Abortion currently is banned in Florida after six weeks.
Floridians Protecting Freedom, the pro-abortion group behind the ballot initiative, spent 8.3 times as much as pro-lifers opposing the proposed amendment.
Pro-lifers filed a lawsuit Oct. 16 against Floridians Protecting Freedom, citing fraudulent practices to put the amendment on the ballot.
More than 100 paid petition circulators associated with the organization engaged in the fraudulent practices, according to a Friday report from the Florida Office of Election Crimes and Security.
DeSantis has used his platform to oppose Amendment 4.
“If Amendment 4 passes, it would get rid of every commonsense rule and regulation on the books in Florida that could possibly ‘delay or restrict’ elective late-term abortion,” he said on X.
By using their voices to raise awareness about radical pro-abortion ballot initiatives, DeSantis and other GOP leaders help “fill the gaps” in funding on the pro-life side, said Kelsey Pritchard, director of state public affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
“In all of these states, and particularly in Florida, what we have seen from the majority of the mainstream media is just a level of hostility that is unprecedented,” Pritchard told The Daily Signal.
She said she hopes this win sends a signal to the mainstream media that Americans don’t want abortion advocates writing their news.
“The way they have painted people who oppose these ballot measures, particularly Ron DeSantis, they have painted him like a dictator,” she continued. “And so to win in a place like Florida, after they have thrown everything they have to try to win these abortion ballot measures for the Left, for the abortion industry, that would be a huge victory.”
Background
Each of the 10 states’ proposed constitutional amendments includes a wide-ranging “health of the mother” clause that would make it legally and practically impossible to pass laws restricting abortion.
In the Supreme Court’s Doe v. Bolton decision, issued the same day in 1973 as the high court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, the justices defined “health” of the mother as referring to “all factors” affecting the pregnant woman, including “physical, emotional, psychological, [and] familial” factors and “the woman’s age.”
Because the opposed amendments to state constitutions contain no limitations on what “health” means and no definitions of “health care professional,” the measures would legalize abortion at any stage of pregnancy.
In most of the 10 states, the pro-abortion lobby far outspent their pro-life opponents.
“The abortion industry can afford to pour millions into these fights,” said Pritchard, the director of state public affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “They will see an ROI [return on investment] if these abortion measures pass in their state, and they will be able to profit exponentially off of aborting more children and off of the health and safety of women and girls, when they don’t have to follow any regulations in their industry.”
This article will be updated as results are announced for each state’s vote on its abortion ballot question.