Ashley Moody: Pro-abortion amendment ballot summary would ‘mislead voters’

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – I am pro-life, unabashedly so. I have been clear and open with Florida’s voters about where I stand on abortion, and I am honored to have received their support—by a large margin—in two statewide elections.

But, my decision to oppose the placement of Floridians Protecting Freedom, Inc.’s initiative on the ballot has nothing to do with my personal views on abortion. Instead, as I have done throughout my two terms, I have objected to initiatives when the language of the summary will mislead voters.

Floridians Protecting Freedom’s initiative is one of the worst I have seen.

As just one example of how misleading this initiative is, the initiative creates a right to abortion through “viability.” As any mother knows, “viability” has two meanings when it comes to pregnancy.

First, it means whether a pregnancy is expected to continue developing normally through delivery. Doctors can tell during the first trimester, usually around about 12 weeks, whether a pregnancy is viable and would have a much lower risk of miscarriage. For that reason, many women often wait to tell family and friends about their pregnancy until that time.

Second, viability is sometimes used to mean whether a baby can survive outside of the uterus, which currently is around 21 to 25 weeks of pregnancy. The two time periods, depending on your definition of viability, are starkly different, and the procedures performed to abort a baby’s life at either time period are dissimilar.

At 23 weeks, an unborn baby is 11-to-14 inches long and weighs a pound or more. Aborting a 23-week unborn baby requires the baby to be dismembered. Even pro-choice aligned scientists agree that a 23-week unborn baby feels pain.

When it comes to viability, even the pro-choice-aligned American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists notes the two medical definitions and urges that “[t]he concept of viability of [an unborn baby] is frequently misrepresented or misinterpreted based on ideological principles. This perpetuates incorrect and unscientific understandings of medical terms….”

Yet, this initiative’s sponsor chose to utilize that frequently misrepresented and misinterpreted term.

That choice was not a mistake. It was done to increase the chance that this provision will pass as polling shows that more Americans support abortion in the first trimester with that support significantly decreasing as pregnancy progresses.

The sponsor has gone so far attempting to deceive Floridians as to not post any information on its website on what it means by viability and when the right to abortion, which it is attempting to enshrine in our Constitution, ends.

While I personally would not vote for this initiative no matter what definition of “viability” it was using, I know that to some voters, it is material to their vote – whether you are talking about an abortion in the first trimester or at the end of the second trimester.

Floridians are entitled to know clearly and concisely what they are voting for or against.

As attorney general, I have a constitutional and statutory duty to inform the Florida Supreme Court when ballot initiatives will confuse voters. Thus, I will file a brief with the court fulfilling that responsibility.

Ashley Moody has been the attorney general of Florida since 2019.