Orlando, FL: Today, the Center for Reproductive Rights, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit challenging House Bill 5, Florida’s 15 week abortion ban. Here is Representative Eskamani’s response:
“I stand in full support of this lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of House Bill 5, Florida’s 15 week abortion ban — a ban that is not only medically unnecessary, but one that provides no exceptions for rape, incest, or human trafficking. This law is a direct assault on Florida’s decades-old privacy clause in the state Constitution that prohibits government intrusion on people’s lives. Floridians have demonstrated in the past and present support for privacy and an understanding that decisions around someone’s pregnancy are personal. Whether you decide to become a parent, choose adoption, or end your pregnancy those decisions must remain between the pregnant person, their family, their doctor, their faith — and not politicians.
Abortion is about freedom, options, self-determination, and a free society. Access to abortion is a right tied to so many other rights, and today anti-abortion extremists are already plotting ways to bans abortion in Florida and restrict access to medication abortion too.
This is not the time to shrink, or surrender — we must keep fighting, in the courts, in the legislature, in our communities and at the ballot box.”
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