Less than a year after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, an expected GOP presidential contender, signed a ban on abortions after the 15-week mark of pregnancy, he’s showing support for an even stricter ban introduced this week by state lawmakers. His position could have implications on the availability of abortion not only in Florida but across the South – and also figure into the 2024 presidential race.
THE CURRENT FLORIDA LAW In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, giving control over abortion to the states. Some conservative legislatures passed bills years in advance that would impose abortion bans if Roe were overturned. Florida wasn’t among those earlier states, but lawmakers acted after a leak of a draft version of the new abortion ruling, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in January 2022.
Florida lawmakers agreed to ban abortion after 15 weeks, with an exception for the life of the woman but not for rape or incest. DeSantis signed it in April and it took effect in July.
THE NEW PROPOSAL
The deeper ban, proposed as Florida’s legislative session opened on Tuesday, would make it a crime to provide an abortion past six weeks’ gestational age.
There would be an exception to save the life of the woman and exceptions in the case of pregnancy caused by rape or incest until 15 weeks of pregnancy. In those cases, the woman would have to provide documentation such as a medical record, restraining order or police report.
The measure would also require that the drugs used in medication-induced abortions — which make up the majority of those provided nationally — could be dispensed only in person by a physician.
DeSantis this week called the rape and incest provisions “sensible” and reiterated his support for tighter restrictions, saying, “We welcome pro-life legislation.”
If Republican lawmakers can agree on the details, it’s likely to become law.
DeSantis was easily re-elected in November, and at the same time, Republicans gained veto-proof majorities in the state Legislature.
WHAT IT COULD MEAN ON THE GROUND
With bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy in nearby Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi and a ban on terminating pregnancies in Georgia after cardiac activity can be detected — around six weeks – Florida has become a haven for people in the region seeking abortions.
A ban at the gestational age of six weeks would mean fewer women traveling to Florida for abortions and more looking at going even further away, to places including North Carolina and Illinois.
“A six-week ban is a really substantial shock to practical abortion access across the South,” said Caitlin Myers, an economics professor at Middlebury College in Vermont who studies abortion access.
There would also be an impact for Florida residents.
Nationally, only about 4% of abortions occur after the 15-week mark, but most of them happen after 6 weeks and 6 days.
Myers said that in states that have had six-week bans, it appears about half the women seeking abortions have been able to get them.
WHAT IT COULD MEAN FOR DeSANTIS
Abortion bans are important for many Republican primary voters and the ban DeSantis signed into law last year was far less aggressive than action in most GOP-controlled states. Thirteen states now have effective bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy and another half-dozen have similar laws on the books but have had enforcement stopped by courts.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, another possible 2024 Republican presidential candidate, was asked in a CBS News interview last year whether she would nudge DeSantis to further restrict abortion. “I think that talking about situations and making statements is incredibly important,” she said, “but also taking action and governing and bringing policies that protect life are even more important because that’s what truly will save lives.”
A six-week ban would move Florida closer to what other GOP-controlled states have done on abortion.
The GOP legislative agenda for coming months there includes making guns more available, keeping immigrants who are in the country illegally out of the state, telling teachers which pronouns they can use for students and criminalizing some drag shows.
He is expected to launch his presidential candidacy formally sometime after the session wraps in May, though the wheels are already in motion. He’s speaking in the early nominating state of Iowa on Friday and a former official in President Donald Trump’s White House on Thursday launched a group encouraging DeSantis to run for president.
While aggressive abortion bans are popular with many conservatives, they are considered unpopular among other crucial voting blocs — especially suburban women who play an outsized role in general elections.
In 2022, there were ballot measures dealing with abortion in six states, including generally conservative Kansas, Kentucky and Montana. In each of them, the abortion-rights side prevailed.
The House voted unanimously on Friday to declassify U.S. intelligence information about the origins of COVID-19, a sweeping show of bipartisan support near the third anniversary of the start of the deadly pandemic.
The 419-0 vote was final approval of the bill, sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law.
Debate was brief and to the point: Americans have questions about how the deadly virus started and what can be done to prevent future outbreaks.
“The American public deserves answers to every aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
That includes, he said, “how this virus was created and, specifically, whether it was a natural occurrence or was the result of a lab-related event.”
The order to declassify focused on intelligence related to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, citing “potential links” between the research that was done there and the outbreak of COVID-19, which the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020.
U.S. intelligence agencies are divided over whether a lab leak or a spillover from animals is the likely source of the deadly virus.
Experts say the true origin of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 1 million Americans, may not be known for many years — if ever.
“Transparency is a cornerstone of our democracy,” said Rep. Jim Himes, of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, during the debate.
Led by Republicans, the focus on the virus origins comes as the House launched a select committee with a hearing earlier in the week delving into theories about how the pandemic started.
It offers a rare moment of bipartisanship despite the often heated rhetoric about the origins of the coronavirus and the questions about the response to the virus by U.S. health officials, including former top health adviser Anthony Fauci.
The legislation from Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., was already approved by the Senate.
If signed into law, the measure would require within 90 days the declassification of “any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of the Coronavirus Disease.”
That includes information about research and other activities at the lab and whether any researchers grew ill.
Total Doses Distributed = 967,430,045. Total Doses Administered = 672,537,312. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 269,650,596. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 230,142,115.
The Biden administration is preparing to relax COVID-19 testing restrictions for travelers from China as soon as Friday, according to two people familiar with the decision.
The people, who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration has decided to roll back the testing requirements as cases, hospitalizations and deaths are declining in China and the U.S. has gathered better information about the surge.
The restrictions were put in place on Dec. 28 and took effect on Jan. 5 amid a surge in infections in China after the nation sharply eased pandemic restrictions and as U.S. health officials expressed concerns that their Chinese counterparts were not being truthful to the world about the true number of infections and deaths.
At the time, U.S. officials also said the restriction was necessary to protect U.S. citizens and communities because there was a lack of transparency from the Chinese government about the size of the surge or the variants that were circulating within China.
As part of its response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year expanded genomic surveillance at several U.S. airports, collecting voluntary samples from passengers aboard hundreds of weekly flights from China, and the testing of wastewater aboard airplanes. The Traveler-based Genomic Surveillance Program will continue to monitor travelers from China and more than 30 other countries.
The decision to lift restrictions comes at a moment when U.S.-China relations have been strained after Biden ordered a Chinese spy balloon shot down last month after it traversed the continental United States. The Biden administration has also publicized U.S. intelligence findings that raise concern Beijing is weighing providing Russia weaponry for its ongoing war on Ukraine.
Earlier Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang warned that Beijing and Washington were headed for “conflict and confrontation” if the U.S. doesn’t change course.
Qin’s comments came a day after President Xi Jinping in an unusually pointed speech said that “Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression of China.”
White House officials sought to downplay the hot rhetoric from Beijing.
“There is no change to the United States’ posture when it comes to this bilateral relationship,” Kirby said. “The president believes those tensions obviously have to be recognized, but can be worked through.
Total Doses Distributed = 965,128,255. Total Doses Administered = 672,076,105. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 269,554,116. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 230,075,934.
Coronavirus lockdowns have been lifted and face masks are few and far between in Britain these days.
But COVID-19 has shot back into the headlines through the leak of more than 100,000 private messages sent or received by the health minister as the government scrambled to respond to the new, fast-spreading respiratory virus.
The words of former Health Secretary Matt Hancock in 2020 have revived painful debates in a country that has seen more than 182,000 coronavirus deaths. Could some deaths have been avoided if lockdowns came sooner, or did more people suffer because restrictions lasted too long?
The nature of the leak has also sparked a storm. Hancock shared his WhatsApp messages with journalist Isabel Oakeshott as they worked on a book, “Pandemic Diaries.” Oakeshott, in turn, handed the messages to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, which has splashed them in a series of front-page stories.
Hancock accused the journalist of a “massive betrayal and breach of trust,” but Oakeshott argued that she’d acted in the public interest.
“This is about the millions of people, every one of us in this country that were adversely affected by the catastrophic decisions to lock down this country repeatedly, often on the flimsiest of evidence for political reasons,” Oakeshott told the BBC.
Hancock said there was no public interest, because he has already given the messages to a public inquiry into Britain’s handling of COVID-19, which is due to start its hearings later this year.
Critics say Oakeshott has a well-known political agenda. She has called lockdowns a “disaster,” and her partner is politician Richard Tice, leader of the lockdown-skeptical Reform Party, formerly known as the Brexit Party.
The Telegraph stories quote selectively from the messages to convey the idea that Hancock resisted others — including then Prime Minister Boris Johnson — who were wary of stringent restrictions.
Steven Barnett, professor of journalism at the University of Westminster, said the Hancock leak was less about the public interest than “about driving an agenda that says the lockdown policies were wrong.”
“As often happens in the U.K. with print journalism, we are getting an agenda being driven by a particular newspaper with a very clear view of what is right and what is wrong,” he said.
Others said Hancock was naive to have trusted Oakeshott, who has a history of spilling secrets.
In 2019, she revealed leaked memos in which the U.K. ambassador in Washington, Kim Darroch, called the Trump administration dysfunctional and inept. The White House cut off contact with the British envoy, and Darroch had to resign.
In 2011, Oakeshott wrote a story disclosing that Vicky Pryce, an economist married to a lawmaker, had lied to police to let her husband escape a speeding fine. Oakeshott later handed her correspondence with Pryce to prosecutors. Both Pryce and her now ex-husband ended up going to prison.
The Telegraph stories have stirred painful memories for many in Britain, which had one of Europe’s highest coronavirus death tolls. One article claimed that Hancock ignored scientific advice to test everyone entering nursing homes for COVID-19, a lapse that led to thousands of deaths.
Hancock said the messages had been deceptively edited. He said testing at the time was limited — in Britain and elsewhere — by a lack of capacity.
James Bethell, a former junior health minister, defended Hancock, saying the messages reflected the confused early days of the pandemic, when officials were working under intense pressure with incomplete knowledge.
“There was a moment we were very unclear about whether domestic pets could transmit the disease,” he told Channel 4 News. “In fact, there was an idea at one moment that we might have to ask the public to exterminate all the cats in Britain.”
Lindsay Jackson, spokesperson for the pressure group COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, said the leaks showed the importance of families being allowed to question Hancock and other officials during the public inquiry, “so we can get full answers to our questions in the right setting instead of having to relive the horrors of our loss through exposés.”
The revelations are the latest setback for Hancock, who was forced to resign from the Conservative government in June 2021 after breaching coronavirus lockdown rules by having an affair with an aide — violating a ban on different households mixing.
He remains a lawmaker, but was suspended by the Conservative Party in November for flying to Australia for several weeks to appear on television reality show “I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here.”
Hancock apologized Thursday for the impact of the leaks “on the very many people — political colleagues, civil servants and friends — who worked hard with me to get through the pandemic and save lives.”
“I will not be commenting further on any other stories or false allegations that Isabel will make,” he said in a statement. “I will respond to the substance in the appropriate place, at the inquiry, so that we can properly learn all the lessons based on a full and objective understanding of what happened in the pandemic, and why.”
