Florida Health Agency Spreads Lies About Abortion Rights Ballot Measure

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in Florida until fetal viability, or around 24 weeks, which is the same standard used in Roe v. Wade before it was repealed in 2022.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.

The transparency page makes several false claims, including that Amendment 4 would lead to unregulated and unsafe abortions. AHCA also criticizes the amendment for not including a definition of “viability” — a term used for decades on both state and federal levels. When Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (R) argued against the amendment during state Supreme Court hearings by saying it should include a definition of “viability,” conservative chief Justice Carlos Muñiz responded: “The people of Florida aren’t stupid … they can figure this out.”

The state agency also included a blatant lie that Amendment 4 eliminates parental consent for a minor who wants an abortion. In fact, the measure states that it “does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

“Our new transparency page serves to educate Floridians on the state’s current abortion law, and provide information on the impacts of a proposed policy change on the ballot in November,” a spokesperson for AHCA told HuffPost via email.

“The law is the law however many in the media have not covered it correctly,” the spokesperson added, referencing several news articles about the state’s six-week abortion ban. All of the reports focus on how the six-week abortion ban is confusing for providers and patients, and that doctors worry about their patients’ ability to access necessary health care. When HuffPost asked AHCA to expand on why those specific articles are problematic, the agency did not immediately respond.

AHCA did refer HuffPost to the website’s page that shows the “myth vs fact” of the state’s six-week abortion ban, which repeats some of the same anti-abortion rhetoric used on the transparency page.

Democrats and abortion rights advocates were deeply upset by ACHA’s website, with several accusing the state agency of illegally campaigning for a political party.

“Using an official government agency … for political campaigning is a clear violation of F.S. 104.31,” tweeted state Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book (D), adding that she is looking into taking legal action. “The voters of Florida deserve law-abiding leadership and to have their voices heard in November — free from government interference and propaganda.”

Floridians Protecting Freedom, the pro-choice group behind Amendment 4, declined to comment on AHCA’s new transparency page.

AHCA, which is tasked with enforcing abortion bans and licensing clinics, has a history of anti-abortion tactics despite its role as a nonpartisan state agency. In recent years, the agency has aligned itself with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration, which has transformed Florida into one of the most conservative anti-abortion states in the country.

When DeSantis signed a 15-week abortion ban into law, prior to the six-week ban, Simone Marstiller, the head of AHCA at the time, spoke at the rally in support of the restriction. Democrats described Marstiller’s presence as a shocking conflict of interest at the time. Weida, the current head of ACHA, regularly retweets Republicans including DeSantis and anti-abortion groups including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

Abortion clinics and lawmakers in the state told HuffPost last month that clinics are forced to report to and rely on a state agency that is opposed to their very existence, with some alleging that the agency unfairly administers compliance fines to abortion clinics in hopes of shutting them down.