Fresh Take Florida
Florida’s ban on abortion beyond six weeks of pregnancy has led to the first decline in abortions since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, a result supporters of the ban hoped for.
The statewide total of 60,755 abortions in 2024 was down 28% from 84,052 in 2023, according to reports to the Agency for Healthcare Administration.
Florida’s three largest counties by population, Miami-Dade, Broward and Hillsborough, each reported declines of more than 20%. The steepest decline was 54% in Dixie County in north-central Florida.
Only two counties, Calhoun in the Panhandle and Glades west of Lake Okeechobee, reported more abortions in 2024 than in 2023. The numbers are reported to the state by healthcare providers and reflect where patients lived at the time of the abortion.
The number of non-Florida residents who got abortions in Florida last year fell 51% to 3,754, the data show. That was the first decline in five years. Abortion totals since the end of 2024 are not publicly available.
The six-week ban was passed by Florida’s Legislature and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023, but legal challenges held up its implementation until last May. Florida previously outlawed abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The 15-week ban began in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, giving states the power to control abortion access.
The current six-week ban includes some exceptions. An abortion may occur past six weeks if the life of the mother is at risk, if there are fatal fetal abnormalties before the third trimester or if the pregnancy is the result of rape, incest or human trafficking if the mother provides documentation and the pregnancy is at 15 weeks or less.
Florida’s initial 15-week ban was the least restrictive of any state in the Southeast. As a result, there was a 15% jump in out-of-state visitors getting abortions in Florida from 2022 to 2023, according to state data. Abortions overall ticked upward by 1.8%. DeSantis complained that Florida had become a destination for “abortion tourism.”
There now are fewer differences between Florida and other states. Georgia and South Carolina also have six-week abortion bans, while Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas enacted total abortion bans with limited exceptions. North Carolina has had a 12-week ban since 2023. Virginia still allows abortion up to viability, preventing it with some exceptions past 26 weeks.
The number of Florida residents who had abortions and live in counties that border Alabama fell 44% in 2024. The number of residents who had abortions and live in counties next to Georgia declined 19%.
Trenece Robertson was able to get an abortion in 2019 when her pregnancy was dated at six weeks and five days, she said. She lived in Louisiana at the time and was visiting Tallahassee. “I don’t think most people’s stories are like that anymore,” she said.
Robertson, 25, now works as a reproductive-rights organizer in Tallahassee. She saw the boost in out-of-state abortion patients when Florida had a 15-week ban, followed by a sharp drop since the six-week ban took effect. Florida women often are trying to get abortions right before the legal deadline, she said.
Florida is no longer an access point for abortion in the southern U.S., said Michelle Quesada, spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida, which offers abortion care in Jacksonville, Miami, Tallahassee and elsewhere.
Those clinics also now try to help Florida women who can’t get an abortion because of the six-week ban travel to states with looser restrictions. More than 1,000 women received assistance from last May to December, Quesada said. The monthly total has surged to about 130 from fewer than a dozen before the ban.
Women also are visiting Planned Parenthood clinics earlier than before, sometimes before a pregnancy can be detected, Quesada said. “They have unprotected sex, and they’re freaking out and calling to make an appointment,” she said. “They don’t understand how this works, that you won’t know if you’re pregnant until you’ve missed a period.”
Similar shifts in how women approach their reproductive health care are happening at First Care Women’s Clinic, which “empowers women facing crisis pregnancies to choose life,” according to its Facebook page. The West Palm Beach clinic provides pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and referrals to adoption agencies.
David Heyman, the Executive Director of First Care, said women are paying more attention to their menstrual cycles and their fertility when they visit the clinic. Those are signs that Florida’s six-week ban is affecting women’s behavior toward seeking an abortion, he said. For example, some women are seeking pregnancy-regulated education.
The six-week ban was proposed by state Sen. Erin Grall, a Fort Pierce Republican. During the bill’s Senate floor vote in April 2023, she said that life begins at conception. As a result, she said, abortion is the leading cause of child deaths in Florida. “We’re so far from safe, legal and rare,” Grall said. “We have normalized and sterilized the taking of life as health care.”
Sen. Alexis Calatayud, a Miami Republican, said before the floor vote that she hoped a six-week ban would encourage women to seek out adoption or family-planning aid instead of abortion. “I believe it will go a long way to help change hearts and minds influenced by a decade of anti-life culture that has demoted and devalued the important role of family,” Calatayud said.
Calatayud and Grall didn’t respond to requests for comment on the steep decline in abortions in Florida.
Florida’s slow but steady increase in abortion restrictions since 2022 gave abortion-rights organizations more time to raise money for people seeking abortions in anticipation of the six-week ban, while educators promoted campaigns about birth control and pregnancy symptoms. Efforts by anti-abortion activists included preparing to fight Amendment 4, which would have overturned the six-week ban. Voters defeated the measure in November.
Anti-abortion supporters like Heyman are hoping to see a steeper decline in Florida in the coming year, he said. The number of abortions fell far more sharply in Texas after they enacted a six-week ban. It had a decline of 58% to 22,232 abortions in 2022 from 2021, according to Texas Health and Human Services. Texas now bans almost all abortions.
“Usually, culture changes, and laws change to reflect those cultural changes,” said Heyman, First Care’s Executive Director. “But the opposite can be true. Laws do impact culture.”
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This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at [email protected]. You can donate to support our students here.
17 comments
Rita Joseph
February 12, 2025 at 2:55 pm
It should never be forgotten that elective abortion is the only medical procedure that involves two patients that has for its
express purpose the direct killing of one of the patients.
Every elective abortion is an act of violence, albeit in a medical setting.
Lethal violence against children is never “necessary.” Violence against children is preventable. Before as well as after birth, children should not receive less protection than adults.
Their mothers’ personal and social needs can and should be met by non-violent means.
Paul Passarelli
February 12, 2025 at 3:48 pm
And when the government forces a woman to carry a pregnancy to term that agency is depriving her of her individual liberties!
The flaw in your argument is that the government somehow possesses a superior set of *RIGHTS* than any individual does. There are no ‘collective rights’.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not in favor of abortion. However, I’m far more opposed to government overreach. When weighed, there is really no contest, I am compelled to support the individual’s ‘right’ to choose above the government’s ‘power’ to compel.
–In Liberty
Rita Joseph
February 12, 2025 at 7:30 pm
A tiny child growing and being nurtured in her mother’s womb is exercising no sinister ‘force’ against her mother. In normal healthy reproductive systems, pregnancy is a benign normal biological process—if protected from the intentionally lethal force exercised arbitrarily by the abortionist to terminate the child’s life, most pregnancies will run a normal healthy (unforced) course.
No ‘force’ or violence is required to be exercised against the mother or her child in order to continue the pregnancy. Not so with ending a pregnancy and forcefully exterminating the utterly defenseless tiny unique new daughter or son being nurtured in that pregnancy.
Indeed. it is the lethal act of abortion perpetrated by the abortionist against her unborn child that introduces a very real and substantial ‘force’ to bring a most violent, most unnatural end to her child’s life in utero.
JD
February 12, 2025 at 7:57 pm
This statement relies on loaded language to frame pregnancy as harmless and abortion as violent, which is not medically accurate.
It ignores the very real risks of pregnancy and the importance of bodily autonomy.
The scientific and legal reality is that abortion is a medical procedure and not an act of arbitrary “violence” against a defenseless being.
Your comment is heavily ideological and misleading statement, not a factual or neutral description of pregnancy or abortion.
It is dangerously close to propaganda.
JustBabs
February 13, 2025 at 10:32 am
When Americans are forced to carry and unplanned, unwanted, or unaffordable pregnancy, the misery and suffering will be for a lifetime, for that child. Those who claimed it was all about “life” could care less about that life. They even degrade and demean them.
Paul Passarelli
February 19, 2025 at 9:51 am
I didn’t say the fetus was doing the forcing, I wrote that the state is imposing a collective will.
What you fail to recognize is that not everyone subscribes to the judeo-christian story that you are so desperate to rely upon to give your argument weight.
I’ll repeat myself. I’m not in favor of abortions. However, I’m even less in favor of the state compelling a woman’s choices to control her reproductive health!
I’ll go even farther. There are two and only two men who could claim to have *ANY* voice with regards to the woman’s decision. The first and only one with potential standing is the father of the fetus. That’s obvious. The second would be the woman’s father, but his voice should be interpreted as that of counsel without legal standing, unless the ‘woman’ is in fact his minor child or he is still her legal guardian for other reasons or purposes. No other person with a Y-chromosome has any say whatsoever!!! That means all governments.
And because I believe in the equal protection clause, the only other woman with say-so is the pregnant girl’s mother, with all the same caveats as her aforementioned father. The rest of the world’s population with two X-chromosomes can ‘relate’ to the pregnant one, sympathize, counsel, but that have no more legal say-so than the rest of the men.
What truly dismays me about the subject is that there so few people like me willing to sat it’s “none of my damn business” and allow the participants to find their own path. And despite your protestations, I do not consider the fetus a ‘participant’, until it reaches the age of viability.
I also define viability in this context as the ability for the child top survive in a ‘wild’ or ‘feral’ condition, receiving no more care than what a wet-nurse could provide. No IV medicines, no incubators, no supplemental O2, artificial lung surfactant, etc. Just delivery of sustaining air, food & water, plus normal shelter, the way our pre-literate, pre-historic, caveman ancestors would have. Again, this is my definition of a transition based on *LOGIC* not religion, not a recommendation for treatment.
— In Liberty
N. Ope
February 14, 2025 at 6:13 pm
Illogical. The Constitution provides the inalienable right to life in the first place. No woman should be forced to become pregnant; no woman should have the unilateral right to end another life–except when her own life legitimately is in danger. The end of any abortion is death. The decision to impose death on any other creature is willful killing. Of course, there are circumstances that can be and have been thoroughly debated. But we know in Florida last year there were not 60,000+ cases of serious threat to the life of the mother.
Paul Passarelli
February 12, 2025 at 3:38 pm
I maintain that the entire abortion debate is the result if ignorance & stupidity — on BOTH sides — of the argument!!!
Rational people can ask which side is more ignorant than the other, or which side is more stupid than the other. However the only answer is that each side is repeatedly and demonstrably more ignorant and more stupid than their counterparts.
Rita Joseph
February 12, 2025 at 7:38 pm
No Paul, rational people understand the dangers of succumbing to a false ideology.
It is in the character of each new obsessive ideology which sweeps the world that sooner or later its dogmas founder in absurd irony.
How ironic that extreme ideological feminists have been allowed to foster the untruth that a mother’s son or daughter being nurtured and protected in her womb is not yet a human being with human rights? They have reinvented the old pre-school fiction that a Stork (named ‘A Woman’s Choice’) brings the baby whose existence is instantaneously affirmed only at the moment of birth.
The irony is that this fiction has been invented and continues to be propagated at a time in history where we have never had so much detailed scientifically verifiable knowledge of the humanity of each child that is taken to the abortionist to be “terminated ”. A mother is able as never before to see her child through an ultrasound window to the womb. Her child is already here; she feels and sees a lively and purposeful presence; she can hear a heartbeat that is not her own.
JD
February 12, 2025 at 7:59 pm
This statement relies on strawman arguments, emotional appeals, and mischaracterizations rather than actual scientific or legal reasoning.
The real debate is about bodily autonomy and legal personhood, not a denial of fetal development.
It is dangerously close to propaganda.
Rita Joseph
February 12, 2025 at 10:25 pm
Nonsense!
In this age of advanced fetal medicine and fetal surgery, it is not reasonable to hold that “unwanted” pregnancies are childless and that no small human being or little person is harmed by an abortion.
It is no longer defensible (if it ever was) to invoke “bodily autonomy” as an excuse :to treat daughters and sons in their mother’s wombs as “choices” either to be kept and cherished or to be rejected and exterminated at their mothers’ call.
What about the bodily autonomy of the unborn child?
What about the basic principled understanding that autonomy is never a license to kill another human being in our power and under our care?
What about equal protection of the law for pregnant mothers and their unborn children?
Denying bodily integrity and equality to another smaller human being temporarily and exclusively in our power and under our care is hardly a just and responsible exercise of our own autonomy or liberty.
All members of “our Posterity” are entitled to the same constitutional protections, the same “blessings of liberty” as “ourselves.”
The right to bodily autonomy exists for both a mother and her unborn child. This principle of indivisibility is a fundamental principle of modern international human rights law. All human rights are equal, inherent, inalienable and inclusive. Human rights entitlement is not scaled according to size or
seniority. Human rights belong equally to every member of the human family at every stage of life.
JD
February 12, 2025 at 11:02 pm
Well you should know nonsense as you wrote plenty.
This argument is full of logical fallacies and emotional appeals that distort the real issue. Here are the main problems with it:
Strawman Argument – The claim that feminists or pro-choice advocates believe a fetus is not a human being is a complete misrepresentation. No one denies that a fetus is biologically human. The actual debate is about legal personhood and whether a fetus’s rights override the rights of the pregnant person. Pretending pro-choice advocates believe in a “stork myth” is a dishonest way to avoid engaging with the actual argument.
False Equivalence – The idea that bodily autonomy applies equally to a fetus and a fully developed person ignores a key fact: a fetus is dependent on another person’s body to survive. No law requires a person to donate an organ or even blood to save someone else’s life, yet this argument acts as if pregnancy is just another case of human rights rather than a unique biological dependency.
Appeal to Emotion – The language used, like “exterminated at their mother’s call” and “treated as a choice,” is designed to provoke outrage rather than address the complexities of pregnancy and bodily autonomy. Framing abortion as a “license to kill” ignores the medical, ethical, and legal aspects of the decision.
Begging the Question – The argument assumes from the start that a fetus has the same legal and moral standing as a born person, which is the very issue being debated. If the premise is that a fetus should be granted full legal rights, then of course abortion looks like a violation of those rights. But that assumption is not legally or philosophically settled, and many legal systems have long treated personhood as something that develops over time.
Ignoring Bodily Autonomy – The argument presents bodily autonomy as an “excuse” rather than a fundamental legal and ethical principle. The law does not force people to sacrifice their bodies for others, even when doing so would save a life. Ignoring this makes the argument incomplete and misleading.
Misuse of “Equal Protection” – The claim that the Constitution guarantees equal protection for a fetus is not legally accurate. The 14th Amendment applies to “persons,” and U.S. legal precedent has never defined fetuses as persons with the same rights as born individuals. The argument selectively interprets constitutional rights to fit its position without addressing the actual legal framework.
Final takeaway: This argument relies on misrepresentations, emotional manipulation, and circular reasoning rather than engaging with the real legal and ethical questions surrounding abortion. It does not prove what it claims to prove.
Your comments are simply more of “flooding the zone with sh!t”
Paul Passarelli
February 19, 2025 at 9:58 am
Rita, your ‘faith’ is, as far as I or anyone else can measure, based on a false ideology.
I would say it borders on obsessive as well. Why? Because it is your faith that is driving you to interfere in the life of another person. A life which does not personally contact you in the slightest way, other than its numerical presence in some tally or headcount.
One more time, I’m not in favor of abortion, but I’m offended by the desire of any person or group of people to exert influence of control over another equally free individual simply because she happens to be pregnant!
Rita Joseph
February 13, 2025 at 1:16 am
Here are the basic truths that expose the real fallacies evident in your claims.
1. All human beings have equal human tights. Both the mother and her unborn child have legal personhood.
For over one hundred and fifty years, the Supreme Court had recognized the genuinely inclusive scope of the words “any person” in the Constitution. Recall that in United States v. Palmer (1818), Chief justice Marshall laid down the rule of interpretation that:
“The words “any person or persons” are broad enough to comprehend every human being…. the words “any person or persons” comprehend the whole human race.”
2, Legalizing the intentional killing of a new life already created and flourishing naturally and autonomously in the womb was never reconcilable with our constitutional structure. This structure is built on the original principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence which set out pre-existing rights, the first of which is the right to life as “endowed by the Creator.”
This right is divinely bestowed at the point of creation of “the infant in the mother’s womb” — the term given by 18th century lawyers to each diminutive child alive and growing organically and with exquisitely ordered self-determination in her/his mother’s womb.
It can be shown that at the time of the founding, it was well settled that “the infant in the mother’s womb” was protected under the common law.
The unborn child’s complete dependency on her/his mother, though natural and normal, is still being recast as an insufferable imposition that each mother, in her exaggerated autonomy, may “choose” to have removed.
It is an autonomy turned malevolent in that it attempts to disconnect the mother from a fundamental good, her human relationship with her child. It removes arbitrarily the natural and normal duty within that relationship to nurture her child, thus “liberating” each mother to present herself as merely “the woman” exercising her prerogative of unlimited autonomy and “choice.”
But “choice” is never a valid excuse for deliberately consigning
any human being in our power and under our care to a lethal medical “procedure
3. In the now discredited Roe v. Wade decision, when Blackmun asserted categorically —
“The word “person,” as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn… ”
he made the mistake of misreading “any person” in the Fourteenth Amendment and so introduced an exception that was never there.
This constituted an invalid reading down of an inclusively worded Amendment
In changing “any person” in Fourteenth Amendment to “only persons already born,” Blackmun tried to “engraft… a substantive exception not found in it…” This wording was used by Justice Benjamin Curtis in his dissent from Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) when confronted with a similarly unwarranted attempt to introduce exceptions to inclusive language in the Constitution.
Having warned against precisely this error of engrafting, Justice Curtis went on to observe perceptively:
“It cannot be doubted that it is incumbent on those who would thus introduce an exception not found in the language of the instrument, to exhibit some solid and satisfactory reason, drawn from the subject-matter or the purposes and objects of the clause, the context, or from the provisions of the constitution, showing that the words employed in this clause are not to be understood according to their clear, plain, and natural signification. ”
Blackmun had no solid basis for his assertion that though the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution says any person without qualification, it means only persons who are already born.
To paraphrase Justice Curtis here, the assertion is, though the Constitution says any person it does not mean any person — though it says any person without qualification, it means any person except a little daughter or son alive and active in her or his mother’s womb.
JD
February 13, 2025 at 1:57 pm
This is AI generated. The long dash is the tell tale sign. Nobody knows how to type it.
Dumbass.
Paul Passarelli
February 19, 2025 at 10:06 am
Er — um — the long dash isn’t the tell.
— In Liberty
P.S. I really hate this thread.. Why? Because people like Rita force me to defend a practice I’m fundamentally opposed to. Because the people that wish to impose their collective will by banning an act is more offensive, and potentially more dangerous to individual liberties than the act they wish to ban.
Anne G
February 13, 2025 at 2:35 pm
The impact to women’s health is far more important than how many this law has decreased terminations. Please do some better research.
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