Florida's Nonpartisan Health Agency Spreads Partisan Lies About Abortion Rights Ballot Measure

Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration claims that Amendment 4, which would restore abortion access to fetal viability, “threatens women’s safety.”

Florida’s agency for health care administration, a publicly funded and purportedly nonpartisan government group, is pushing misinformation about the state’s abortion rights amendment that will be in front of voters in November.

Jason Weida, secretary for Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), tweeted Thursday afternoon to announce an improved “transparency page” to “combat the lies and disinformation surrounding Florida’s abortion laws.” The transparency page on the government website greets viewers with a large opening statement that reads: “Florida is protecting life. Don’t let the fearmongers lie to you.” The page alleges that current Florida law “protects women” while the pro-choice ballot measure, Amendment 4, “threatens women’s safety.”

Florida currently has a six-week abortion ban — a point at which the majority of people don’t yet know they’re pregnant — with exceptions for rape, incest, human trafficking and life of the pregnant person, although life-saving care has been delayed or denied to Florida women under the law. Amendment 4 would restore abortion access in Florida until fetal viability, or around 24 weeks, which is the same standard used in Roe v. Wade before it was repealed in 2022.

The transparency page claims that Florida’s six-week abortion ban is “designed to protect women from dangerous and unsanitary conditions” and sets “reasonable and common-sense guardrails for medical professionals and their facilities.”

HuffPost spoke with nearly a dozen such providers at facilities last month who say that the current law is untenable. Doctors are forced to turn away hundreds of patients including those who didn’t realize they were pregnant before the six-week mark. Providers also told HuffPost they’ve had to turn away patients with fetal abnormalities in wanted pregnancies because they couldn’t get approval for the procedure from two physicians, which is required by law. Many said the vague wording of the law, coupled with criminal punishments for doctors, deters physicians from signing off on necessary procedures.