Democrats drag Rick Scott on second anniversary of Dobbs decision

Image via AP.

Florida Democrats will be the first to tell you that reproductive rights are on the November ballot, and they say that doesn’t just apply to the constitutional amendment in play.

For potential Democratic Senate nominee Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, her challenge to incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott illustrates what’s at stake when it comes to abortion rights in the Sunshine State and beyond.

“Extremist Republicans like Rick Scott have made it clear they won’t stop at overturning Roe v. Wade — they’ll attack access to contraception and IVF, too,” Mucarsel-Powell said.

She issued a statement coinciding with the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that reverted abortion law to the states and reversed court precedent established in 1973’s Roe v. Wade.

“In the last two years, Rick Scott has cosponsored a national abortion ban and backed Florida’s abortion ban that will only increase rates of maternal mortality and violence against women. And when corrupt politicians like Rick Scott take away one right, they never stop there,” Mucarsel-Powell added.

“This month, Scott has voted against bills to protect access to IVF and contraception. No politician should have the right to decide when a woman can start her family. In November, Floridians will hold Scott accountable for his dangerous agenda.”

For his part, Scott is saying he will protect in vitro fertilization, noting in an ad that his own daughter is using the procedure for family planning. But he voted against advancing the Right to IVF Act this month in the Senate all the same, as Republicans united to stop Democrats from getting their language to the floor.

Third-party groups trying to ensure Scott is a single-term Senator are singing from the same hymnal.

“Over the past two years, women have been turned away from hospital rooms, sent to court to plead for permission to receive health care or forced to carry pregnancies to term with no chance of survival. Anti-choice extremists like Rick Scott are entirely responsible, he spent years fighting to overturn Roe and celebrated its downfall,” said Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried. “Floridians will remember Scott’s record and hold him accountable for his endless assault on women’s freedom to make their own medical decisions.”

“Scott has a long record of using the government to interfere in reproductive health care and hold him accountable. Throughout his time as a self-serving politician, Senator Rick Scott has called for banning abortion care, limiting access to contraception, and injecting politicians into the personal medical decisions of patients and their doctors,” reads a statement from the progressive Scott Watch.

“While the Dobbs decision was the end of a long path in the fight against reproductive freedom, the road to get there was paved brick-by-brick through the actions of extreme politicians like Rick Scott whose attacks on patients’ access to abortion care, contraception, and family planning treatments like IVF led us to the reality millions of Floridians are forced to deal with today.”

National Democrats note that Florida’s abortion law has had dire, seemingly unintended consequences. An email to press from the Democratic National Committee notes that because of Florida’s law, which now bans the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, a woman was forced to “carry her pregnancy to term knowing that there was no chance of survival.”