A stricter abortion law is set to take effect in Florida on Wednesday — dropping the state’s 15-week ban to a six-week ban — and it will likely affect thousands of people seeking abortion care within the first month alone.
Florida has become a key abortion access point amid widespread restrictions that have taken hold in the region in the two years since the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade. It’s also one of the country’s most populous states.
Last year, 1 of every 3 abortions in the South — and about 1 in every 12 nationwide — happened in Florida, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization focused on sexual and reproductive health that supports abortion rights. In 2023, there were about 7,000 abortions in Florida each month, and more than 9,000 people traveled from other states to get an abortion in Florida throughout the year, the data shows.
Many women don’t know that they’re pregnant six weeks after their last menstrual period, and other states that have enacted laws with this early gestation limit saw significant cuts to abortion care. In Texas, the number of abortions provided within the formal health-care system dropped by about half after a six-week abortion ban took effect in 2021, and there were thousands more births than expected in the following year. In South Carolina, there was a 70% decrease in abortions just one month after the state enforced a six-week limit.
Maybe? Found this in an NPR article:
So you’d just need to find a doctor willing to say she’d die without it. In practice these kinds of exceptions put doctors at risk, so they may be more unwilling to perform abortions in “borderline” cases. They might have opted for some other treatments until your wife got “bad enough” to justify the d&c.
I’m really sorry for your loss, I’m glad the doctors were able to treat your wife promptly and she didn’t have to suffer through the pain and delay many women in Florida will have to endure in the coming years.