Lawmakers in Florida Reject Abortion Limits

Abortion rights advocates scored a resounding victory and Florida’s Gov. Bob Martinez suffered an embarrassing defeat Wednesday when the state Legislature swiftly killed the last of his attempts to build on a U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing tighter restrictions on abortion.

“I think the lessons from Florida will be taken into account by other governors and state legislatures across the country,” pro-choice leader Kate Michelman declared shortly after the Democratic-run Legislature had spent barely more than a day burying all four proposals pressed by the Republican governor in a special session.

“Elected officials are catching up with the people on the question of freedom of conscience,” said Michelman, executive director of the National Abortion Rights Action League. “And they are recognizing that the bark of the anti-choice minority is louder than its bite.”

Martinez and leaders of anti-abortion groups bitterly disagreed, charging that partisan maneuvers to kill legislation in committee had prevented the full Senate and House from enacting, at a minimum, stronger regulation of abortion clinics.

Senate and House committees decisively rejected a clinic control bill Wednesday. An effort was made later to have the full Senate consider it, but a bipartisan 22-18 vote in favor of the move fell short of the required two-thirds majority.

“The Florida Legislature is incredibly cynical,” said Ken Connor, president of Florida Right to Life. “And I think you are going to see an outpouring of outrage so profound in other states that they will look very hard and try to avoid that kind of thing there.”

The brief legislative session was marked by emotional outpourings from both sides. Police estimated that 10,000 abortion rights demonstrators and 7,000 anti-abortion demonstrators had converged on the Capitol at the start of the special session.

The session had been scheduled to last up to four days but ended just 27 hours after it started when all of the governor’s proposed legislation had been defeated.

Martinez denied that he had been hurt politically by the futile session, which he called last July shortly after the Supreme Court upheld a restrictive Missouri law and opened the way for other states to adopt abortion curbs.

Many GOP legislators pleaded with him to abandon the session after public opinion polls ran strongly against it--and after the Florida Supreme Court ruled last week that Florida’s right-to-privacy law gave broad protection to women choosing to terminate a pregnancy.

“I think I stood for my convictions,” Martinez said. “I don’t think people in any state have an adverse feeling toward someone who stands up on a matter of conviction.”

However, in an extraordinary move, moderate Republican Sen. Marlene Woodson-Howard announced during the session that she would challenge Martinez in his bid to win reelection to a second term next year. She voted against three of his proposals in a Senate committee and offered a watered-down version of his clinic regulation bill.

Besides seeking strengthened regulation of clinics, Martinez proposed to ban most abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy, to prohibit abortions at public hospitals and to require that those seeking abortions be informed of the condition of the fetus and the risks of the procedure.

The abortion clinic measure, far less stringent than an Illinois law now being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, was supported even by some pro-choice legislators who were appalled by a recent Miami Herald expose describing botched abortions at a Florida clinic.

The measure was rejected despite graphic testimony by state investigators who, responding to the newspaper report, had raided 16 clinics in recent weeks and found conditions “shocking” enough to close three and further probe five others.

Greg Coler, secretary of the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, said a Miami clinic had an unlicensed physician, no toilet, no hot water and cockroach poison in a room where surgical instruments were sterilized.

Another clinic’s doctor paid a bonus if personnel could get the patient to opt for “the more expensive type of anesthesia,” he told the Senate Health Care Committee.

“Frankly, I have really been shocked,” said Connie Sheren, the state licensing director who displayed photographs of clinics she had investigated while posing as an abortion customer.

Coler, claiming that the legality of the raids was clouded by a 1982 federal court ruling, appealed for more authorization.

Anti-abortion leaders, seeking to salvage something from the session, made a last-ditch effort to pass a stripped-down regulation bill. But Democratic leaders, originally inclined toward such a deal, spurned it after pro-choice groups protested that making any concession to Martinez and anti-abortion groups might deprive them of momentum in other states.

The rejection infuriated Rosemary Gallagher of the Florida Catholic Conference, who told the Senate committee: “In your hands lies the ability to protect the women of this state from exploitation by these clinics. The blood of these women will not be on the hands of the pro-life movement.”

Democratic Rep. Elaine Gordon, one of three women committee heads who spearheaded defeat of the Martinez bills, said the Legislature probably would tighten regulations in a regular session, after the Supreme Court has ruled on the Illinois law and lawmakers have had more time to consider the matter.

But she said the Legislature responded to the grass-roots fury of women who suddenly realize that their right to abortion, legalized by the Supreme Court in 1972, is threatened by the court’s Missouri ruling last July.

“This is definitely the awakening of the sleeping giant,” she said. “And I think in many other states it is possible to waken the sleeping giants there as well.”

NEXT STEP

Anti-abortion forces, badly beaten in Florida, hope to turn things around in Pennsylvania, where the state Legislature has begun considering a batch of restrictive measures. Abortion-rights supporters appear to be outnumbered, but they are fighting back with a new opinion poll, which they say shows that legislators are out of step with Pennsylvania voters. They promised to target anti-abortion candidates in the state’s elections next year.