Florida’s Newest Anti-Abortion Bill Proves It Was Never, Ever, Not Even a Little Bit, About ‘States’ Rights’

When the U.S. Supreme Court reversed decades of constitutional abortion protections last year, defenders insisted the Dobbs decision wasn’t banning all abortions, it was just kicking the issue back to a question of “state’s rights.” That was always a lie and a new bill out of Florida just proved it beyond any doubt.

A number of states have tried to cut off abortion access not just within their own borders, but by attempting to prohibit residents from traveling out-of-state for necessary healthcare procedures. Republican lawmakers in Missouri, Texas, and Tennessee have introduced bills aiming to put restrictions on people traveling between states for abortion. Idaho passed an “abortion trafficking” ban (which is being challenged in the court system), prohibiting anyone from obtaining abortion medication for a minor or from helping them leave the state to get an abortion.

What is Florida doing now?

A new bill proposed in Florida takes things even further. HB1519 would expand the definition of who is considered an abortion provider and is therefore vulnerable to punishment, including jail time. The new definition of what constitutes “performing an abortion” would include anyone who mails abortion medication to someone in Florida, as well as anyone who prescribes abortion medication to a Floridian, even if that prescription is written in another state, and even if that medical professional is unaware the patient lives in Florida.

And here’s where things get really wild: The bill also considers someone to be an abortion provider if they are a “person or an entity intentionally placing an abortifacient into the stream of commerce when the person or entity knows that the abortifacient is substantially likely to be used in this state or mailed or sent by common carrier to an address in this state.”

What does that mean? It means it would be illegal for a person or company anywhere to manufacture, sell, or otherwise distribute an abortion pill if there’s a chance that pill could be purchased or used by someone in Florida.

It was never about letting states decide

This proposal absolutely destroys Republicans’ own arguments that abortion should be an issue left up to the states. (It’s also not very free-market of them, limiting what can enter “the stream of commerce” despite customer demands.) This bill would prohibit people or companies in, say, California or Vermont from making or selling abortion medication if there’s a chance it could be used by someone in Florida.

Even imposing restrictions on interstate shipping wouldn’t be enough since the language of the bill could be read to prohibit even unknowingly letting someone obtain the meds in person—maybe while on vacation or attending college in another state—if there’s even a chance they might bring it back to Florida with them. If someone obtains the medication and sends it to a friend in need in Florida, that would be prohibited. And under this bill, even the possibility of that happening could be enough to get a medication taken off the market.

Even if this extremist bill doesn’t get passed—even if it sounds unenforceable—it is sending a clear signal as to what Florida Republicans are after, which is a total nationwide ban on abortions. Every argument they’ve ever made suggesting otherwise was always a bad-faith lie.

(H/T Erin Ryan, featured image: John Parra/Getty Images for MoveOn)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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