A ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the Florida Constitution has failed, the Associated Press projected, marking the first time such an effort has failed at the ballot box since the fall of Roe v. Wade.
In Florida, a little over 57% of the electorate supported the abortion rights initiative — known as Amendment 4 — but it failed to meet the state’s 60% threshold requirement for constitutional amendments. Florida is one of the states with the highest voter approval threshold needed for such measures.
“The reality is because of Florida’s constitution, a minority has decided that Amendment 4 will not be adopted,” said Lauren Brenzel, campaign director of the group behind the initiative Floridians Protecting Freedom, at an event after the results were called. “The reality is a majority of Floridians, in what is the most conservative presidential election in Florida history, just voted to end Florida’s abortion bans.”
Brenzel added that “Republicans, Democrats and independents do not support these extreme bans on abortion” and urged the Florida Legislature to overturn the state’s ban.
Florida has one of the strictest abortion laws in the country: It bans the procedure at about six weeks (before many people know they’re pregnant) and adds other restrictions, such as a mandatory 24-hour waiting period and an ultrasound. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed the bill in the middle of the night in April of last year, at the time called the ban a “pro-life protection” and later reiterated he “was happy” to have signed it.
Former President Donald Trump (a Florida resident), however, has been more critical of the ban. When asked if he’d be supporting the abortion rights measure in September, Trump said the state’s ban was “too short,” prompting outrage from the anti-abortion community. While he ended up admitting that he’d vote against the measure, when reporters asked him how he had voted on Election Day, Trump — who has tried to distance himself from the issue — told reporters to “just stop talking about that.”
Mollyann Brodie, executive vice president and executive director of public opinion and survey research for KFF, told NOTUS ahead of the election that polling showed that over half of Floridians supported the amendment, but it was “very likely” that it would not be enough to surpass the 60% requirement.
While blue states like California and Vermont each saw over 65% of voters in favor of their constitutional abortion rights measures, Florida’s results are closer to those in Michigan, Ohio, Kansas, Kentucky and Montana, red or purple states where over half of voters (nearly 60%, but not quite) supported measures in favor of abortion rights.
Anti-abortion advocates immediately started praising Republicans in Florida for preventing the initiative from passing.
“The demise of pro-abortion Amendment 4 is a momentous victory for life in Florida and for our entire country,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement, failing to mention that still a majority of voters in Florida supported the initiative. “Thanks to Gov. Ron DeSantis, when we wake up tomorrow, babies with beating hearts will still be protected in the free state of Florida.”
The 60% vote requirement was not the only hurdle that abortion rights advocates needed to cross this election cycle.
Since Floridians approved that 60% threshold in 2006 (with a 58% vote in favor), Republicans in the state have continued to pass measures to make it harder for citizens to pass a constitutional amendment. In 2020, for example, DeSantis signed into law a bill raising the minimum number of signatures needed for a petition from 10% of registered voters to 25%.
Even after Floridians Protecting Freedom gathered the necessary signatures to get the abortion measure on the ballot, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody challenged it before the state’s Supreme Court, arguing that it was “misleading.” (The court ultimately disagreed with Moody.)
Members of the Florida Democratic Party campaigned heavily on the abortion measure but have faced turnout issues in the state (the number of registered Democrats is way lower than that of registered Republicans or unaffiliated voters). However, some Democrats in the state say that the measure’s failure could be due in part to the party aligning itself so closely with the measure, as it may have turned Republicans and independent voters away from the initiative. (Floridians Protecting Freedom has said that the campaign is nonpartisan.)
Robert Dempster, former Miami-Dade Democratic Party chairman, told NOTUS before the initiative results were called, “If it fails, I’m pretty confident that that will have been a factor.”
“Maybe because [the Florida Democratic Party] didn’t like the way the numbers were going, they wanted to attach themselves to the one thing that might have a chance of passing, that they can claim victory for. I just think that’s bullshit, particularly when it might come at the cost of women’s lives,” Dempster said. “I would think that they would want to do every single thing that they can, swallow their egos, be strategic and do what they have to do to push it across the finish line, instead of trying to get another media hit to be able to point to something afterwards and say, ‘We did this.’”
—
Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS.