Debbie Mucarsel-Powell continues to hammer Rick Scott on abortion restrictions

Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell hopes to win her party’s nomination to take on U.S. Sen. Rick Scott this Fall, and her campaign is betting heavily on the abortion issue galvanizing turnout.

With the state’s Heartbeat Protection Act banning the procedure in most cases after six weeks of pregnancy, and a potential constitutional amendment that could roll back Florida’s abortion law to permit termination of pregnancy “before viability” of the fetus on the ballot, the former South Florida Congresswoman has repeatedly slammed Scott for rhetorical inconsistencies on the issue.

A new press call offered more of the same, with the candidate ripping Scott, a former Governor, for saying he would have signed the state-level abortion law and suggesting that if he could, he would impose a national abortion ban.

Mucarsel-Powell said Scott on Tuesday “doubled down on his support for Florida’s near total abortion ban just 24 hours after claiming that he no longer supported it.”

“Rick Scott can’t help but embrace the most extreme policies that are stripping away Floridians of their freedoms and that is putting women’s lives in danger,” she said.

“Scott would still sign the near total abortion ban in Florida if he was Governor and he co-sponsored a national ban in the Senate, which by the way, it includes criminalizing doctors and health care providers for providing this medical care for women.”

She argues the issue could tilt things this November.

“Rick Scott is lying because he knows just out of step he is with Floridians with the majority of us who support protection, reproductive freedom and having access to abortion. And that includes Republicans.”

Asked if she would back any restrictions to the procedure, Mucarsel-Powell did not offer a threshold in terms of weeks of pregnancy, though she did note that as a mother, she does not support the most extreme iterations of terminations of pregnancy and that she supports the ballot amendment “as written.”

“To even insinuate that I would support an abortion at full term, who comes up with that? Women don’t do that,” she said. “And if they do that, we already have laws in the books to protect the life of the child.”

For those unfamiliar, the proposed amendment stipulates that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

Viability itself is a fluid concept even according to the experts.

It could be anything past 20 weeks, per the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). However, deliveries before 23 weeks have barely a 5% survival rate with nearly universal mortality among those infants that survive being delivered so prematurely.

Mucarsel-Powell also addressed polling of the Senate race from Florida Atlantic University (FAU) that shows her 16 points behind Scott, with a question coming from reporter Mitch Perry about whether she is putting too much emphasis on abortion given FAU found other issues mattered more to poll respondents.

“Abortion rights is going to be a priority for the majority of Floridians,” Mucarsel-Powell said.

She added that she had talked to a 72-year-old man who said it was his “top issue” because he had an aunt who died before 1973’s Roe v. Wade secured “access to that critical care,” and that he also has daughters for whom abortion rights are an issue of “safety” and “health care.”