House passes bill to allow wrongful death lawsuits for fetuses after emotional debate

Democrats shared their personal fertility stories and quoted “The Handmaid’s Tale” on the House floor Wednesday but that wasn’t enough to sway Republicans from voting against a bill to allow wrongful death lawsuits to be filed for fetuses.

“It is devastating to lose a pregnancy. I know because I’ve lost three,” said Rep. Allison Tant, a Tallahassee Democrat, who feared frozen embryos could become the subject of civil suits. “We are going to see lawsuits like we’ve never seen. They’re going to go through the roof.”

HB 1517 passed with a 79-32 vote following more than an hourlong emotional debate.

Republicans argued the bill would fix a glaring hole in the law in circumstances where parents are in an accident and can’t collect damages for losing their unborn child.

“This is about a loss that is so hard to understand,” said bill sponsor Rep. Sam Greco, a St. Augustine Republican. “This bill allows grieving parents to recover in the tragic circumstance in which they wrongfully lose their unborn child.”

The ACLU of Florida spoke out against the bill following the House’s passage.

“Let’s be clear: this bill is part of a broader, deceptive strategy to intimidate abortion providers, patients, and even their loved ones through the threat of civil litigation,” ACLU legislative director Kara Gross said. “The sponsor purports that this bill is simply about providing compensation to pregnant couples who lose their pregnancy, but this type of compensation is already allowed under existing Florida law. What Florida law doesn’t cover – and what this bill would do – is allow any person who impregnates another to bring a cause of action against health care providers, friends, and family who support a woman’s efforts to access abortion care.”

If the bill passed, it wouldn’t matter at what stage of pregnancy the unborn child’s death occurred since viability isn’t considered. A fetus would be regarded as “any member of the species, Homo sapiens, at any stage of development,” Greco said.

An unborn child’s own mother could not be subject to those lawsuits, nor would medical providers giving “lawful medical care,” including for IVF and other assisted reproductive technology, according to staff analysis of the bill. The study could not determine the bill’s potential financial impact on the government, private companies, or individual people.

Greco added that wrongful death suits must involve negligence, breach of contract, or other factors at play for the law to apply.

Tant, who underwent IVF and went through multiple heartbreaks to finally become a mother of three, said she believed her frozen embryos could be subject to lawsuits under the bill.

“The science of IVF may be protected under this bill, but the embryos once viable and transferred are not — meaning that providers are exposed,” Tant said. “The liability in this bill goes further than current malpractice standards. It imperils both IVF practice and high-risk pregnancy treatments.”

Added Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat, “I’m very, very, very concerned this bill opens up the floodgates to cause chaos in Florida … This could be a back door abortion ban.”

Florida already has one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, with most abortions not allowed after six weeks.