All posts tagged "reproductive rights"

These GOP legislators hate their own voters and don't care who knows it

Ever get the feeling the Florida Legislature hates you?

It does.

Unless you’re a developer, a lobbyist, or a fetus.

Members are filing hell-born bills for the 2026 session, many apparently designed to torment you, rob your children of their futures, and reduce this state to an ICE-filled, disease-ridden, constantly flooding, unaffordable autocracy.

Perhaps you cherish Florida’s natural beauty: the trees, the springs, the beaches, the wetlands.

Enjoy them while you can.

Sen. Stan McClain, R-Ocala, has filed a bill to forbid local government regulation of, and restrictions on, development.

SB 208 would allow all manner of unrestricted housing to be built wherever, whenever, even if the city objects because, say, it violates their comp plans, harms the character of a neighborhood, or pollutes.

You will not be shocked to learn Sen. McClain’s profession is “residential contractor.”

It gets worse: HB 479 would ensure sprawl, clear-cutting, and wetlands destruction can proceed unimpeded by any city or county trying to manage growth or protect local quality of life.

Environmental watchdogs call it “one of the worst water bills” they’ve ever seen.

This stinker’s sponsor is Rep. Randy Maggard of Pasco County. He may have been inspired by his nephew’s desire to build a house in Dade City’s La Jovita Golf and Country Club community, where homeowners pride themselves on living in harmony with wildlife.

As reported by Craig Pittman, it seems Zach Maggard broke an impressive number of rules, running a concrete boat ramp through wetlands and chopping down protected trees.

The project disappeared a bald eagle nest. Naturally, he suffered no consequences.

Next thing you know, his uncle is working to kneecap those pesky ordinances so everybody can go wild monetizing every inch of ground.

If your town wants to protect the wetlands that mitigate flooding, filter your drinking water, and foster birds and fish, or perhaps want to stop a project that would rip out the mangroves that sequester carbon, reduce storm surge, and slow down erosion, or maybe refuse a permit for, say, a huge gas station on top of a cave system connected to one of the state’s most iconic springs, you’ll be flat out of luck.

Of course, the federal government might kill Florida before Florida can kill itself.

The Trump administration wants to narrow the definition of “Waters of the United States” — which are protected by the Clean Water Act — removing protections from 80 percent of the nation’s wetlands.

They also want to drill in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

Anybody remember the BP oil spill?

Control

There’s no aspect of human life the Legislature doesn’t mean to control.

You should not be LGBTQ. Or demonstrate support for LGBTQ people.

Once again, lawmakers want to ban Pride flags outside government buildings.

God forbid somebody display a piece of cloth with a rainbow, signifying inclusiveness and welcome.

“Historical” flags, the Confederate battle flag, for example, will be allowed — in case you’re wondering what Republicans really care about.

Like gay people and flags, women must also be highly regulated.

Sen. Erin Grall has, once again, got her “fetal personhood” bill past the Judiciary Committee.

SB 164 would allow parents to sue for damages over the death of a fetus deemed “wrongful,” even if the fetus couldn’t have survived outside the womb.

That fetus is an American citizen.

“Survivors” could try to recover “lost earnings” of what the bill calls the “unborn child,” defined as a “member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb,” maybe on the theory it might have grown up to become a movie star like George Clooney or start a company like Nvidia and be worth billions.

Grall has long pushed legislation to control women’s bodies.

When Florida passed a six-week abortion ban in 2023, Grall, a sponsor, said, “Abortion has touched every single one of us, and we should grieve for what we have done as a country.”

That incest victim, that 16-year-old who didn’t know she was pregnant until she was past the time limit, would probably disagree.

Since women no longer have reproductive freedom in the Free State of Florida, it might be best if they just refrain from having sex.

“Freedom” in Florida means freedom from compassion for the poor, freedom from learning, freedom from the consequences of racism and prejudice, and freedom from science-based medicine.

Our state surgeon general has decreed children don’t need to be vaccinated against hepatitis B, chickenpox, haemophilus type B, and pneumococcal conjugate virus to go to school.

Now he and Gov. Ron DeSantis want the Legislature to roll back other vaccine mandates, including polio, pertussis, measles, mumps, diptheria, and rubella.

If that’s not enough, Erin Grall has another bill to protect you from your own health.

SB 408 says that if you get a vaccine and it “harms” you, and if that vaccine was advertised in the state of Florida on TV, radio, in print, via product placement, or online influencers, you can sue the manufacturer.

The measure does not define “harm.” Is a sore arm or a low-grade fever “harm”?

Anaphylaxis? Death?

A serious allergic reaction to a vaccine is possible, but it’s vanishingly rare.

Much rarer than, say, getting severely sick or even dying because you think the jab is some evil plot to impair your precious bodily fluids.

This lawsuit nonsense isn’t about sound medicine. The thin (one page) bill might attract all manner of even more extreme amendments.

Go ahead, risk your kid’s health; let your kid become a walking disease factory.

Guns

And if your kid makes it to 18, why not let him or her buy a nice, scary gun?

After 17 died in the mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day, 2018, the Florida Legislature did the right thing, passing a bill to limit the purchase of semi-automatic rifles to those 21 and up.

That bill, signed into law by noted liberal Rick Scott, was such an affront to the House of Representatives and their NRA overlords, they keep trying to roll it back.

For three years, House Republicans proposed repealing the law.

Why not go back to allowing 18-year olds to buy themselves a Smith & Wesson M&P 15, just like Nicholas Cruz did?

So far, the Senate has shut these bills down.

But this is Florida and 2026 is an election year, so who knows?

Taxes

Thank God for Republicans’ Klown Kar ideas for eliminating property taxes: a bit of comic relief in these dark days.

The Legislature will consider no fewer than eight proposals, one eliminating non-school taxes altogether (HJR 201), one phasing out non-school taxes over 10 years (HJR 203), another exempting Florida residents over 65 from non-school homestead taxes (HJR 205), yet another limiting assessed value to 3 percent over three years for homestead property and 15 percent for non-homestead property, also over three years (HJR 213).

And a partridge in a pear tree.

OK, that last one is made up, but you get the idea.

DeSantis despises all of them.

(He despises a lot of things, but he really loathes what he sees as the House of Representatives’ gaggle of tax-cutting ideas).

The governor calls them “milquetoast,” unserious, and “weak.”

Speaker of the House Daniel Perez points out DeSantis “has not produced a plan on property taxes. Period.”

Perez adds, “I’ve personally reached out to share with him the House’s proposals and he has, so far, not wanted to engage in a conversation.”

A cynical person might suspect DeSantis might be running for higher office in 2028 and wants to claim he “liberated” Floridians from the terrible burden of paying for local police, fire services, libraries, parks, and road repair.

They all need to get a move on if they want to get one (or more!) of these bad ideas onto the 2026 ballot.

In any case, watching the Legislature and our testy governor duke it out will be entertaining, and God knows, we’ll need some fun come January.

Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee, which probably explains her unhealthy fascination with Florida politics. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

I'm not a mother but I know Pam Bondi's view of motherhood is truly disturbing

I have yet to be a mother, but I froze my eggs a few years ago, and am thankful to have that choice to have a family of my own one day — a choice that was taken away from a woman in Georgia who was declared brain dead in February, yet kept on life support and forced to carry her fetus until she gave birth this June.

This harrowing situation unfolded because hospital officials feared they'd violate Georgia's law banning most abortions after fetal cardiac activity.

A few years ago, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, some anti-abortion advocates were taking issue with IVF procedures, citing that destroying unused embryos is equivalent to taking a life.

In May 2025, a car bomb exploded in the parking lot at a fertility clinic in Palm Springs. Upon hearing the news, I immediately felt concern for the individuals who kept their eggs and embryos at this clinic. While no individuals or reproductive materials were harmed, the fear was palpable for me, having stored my own eggs in a Massachusetts clinic. This incident was deemed an act of terrorism, carried out by the perpetrator because of his anti-natalist views — his belief that it is wrong to have children.

What all these stories have in common is the insidious attempt to control women — control our reproductive health, our bodies, whether we live or die. They are only the most recent examples of how women's choices are being systematically stripped away.

Even the way those in power respond shows a disturbing and deeply ingrained narrow view of women and their choices. In response to the Palm Springs incident, Attorney General Pam Bondi stated in a post on X, "Let me be clear: The Trump administration understands that women and mothers are the heartbeat of America. Violence against a fertility clinic is unforgivable."

That sentence, though seemingly innocuous, reveals a troubling worldview. It implies that women are primarily valued as mothers, that our worth as women is intimately connected to our reproductive lives, and our health choices are directly tied to our ability to fulfill this singular role.

Yet there are myriad valid reasons why a woman may never have children: health issues, infertility, personal choice, not finding a suitable partner, or socioeconomic instability, to name a few.

Despite this, the current Trump administration and the conservative faction in our country seem fixated on justifying womanhood solely through the lens of motherhood. This reductive stance is evidenced by Vice President JD Vance's dismissive "childless cat lady" comment, where he questioned the stake of childless individuals in the nation's future, and further underscored by the Trump administration's proposals for “baby bonuses'” and tax-deferred investment accounts designed to incentivize childbirth.

Consider the ripple effects of this narrow perspective.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade has paved the way for states to make abortion illegal or incredibly restrictive, fundamentally stripping women of their agency and bodily autonomy. Once pregnant, in 41 states, a woman's body is now no longer entirely her own, but rather a vessel subject to state control.

The very act of bombing a fertility clinic, while deplorable, was deemed so primarily because a fertility clinic is associated with the creation of babies. The outrage stemmed from the perceived threat to potential motherhood, not necessarily the broader violation of individual liberty or the act of terrorism itself.

This singular focus extends to how women are perceived even in death. The Georgia case forces us to confront a horrifying reality: Even when a woman is brain dead, her bodily autonomy can be overridden in favor of a fetus. Her existence, in this context, is reduced to her reproductive capacity, even in her final moments.

This legal and ethical quagmire highlights how deeply ingrained the concept of women as mere incubators has become in some interpretations of the law.

Individuals should be valued for more than their potential or actual role as mothers.

I do not disagree that motherhood can be a profoundly important and vital aspect of life, and for many, it is. As someone who still hopes to be a mother, it is for me. Yet I do not know the future, and there is a real possibility that I may never have children. Therefore, to define a woman's entire identity and worth by her reproductive capacity is a dangerous reduction, not to mention emotionally charged for individuals such as myself.

Like any human, women are multifaceted beings with diverse aspirations, careers, contributions to society, and personal lives that extend far beyond the biological function of childbearing.

This societal obsession with motherhood as the pinnacle of female existence not only devalues women who choose not to have children or are unable to, but it also places undue pressure on those who do. It limits our collective imagination of what a woman can be and achieve.

We must challenge this pervasive narrative and advocate for a society where women's autonomy, choices, and identities are respected and celebrated in all their diverse forms, irrespective of their maternal status. It is time to assert that a woman's life, and her death, should be her own.

'Heartbreaking': Trump cuts shutter clinic — force students to travel 50 miles for care

With the closure of a nearby Planned Parenthood clinic at the beginning of May, students from Utah State University in Logan, Utah, face a “scary” situation in terms of accessing health care, prompting the creation of a carpool to drive patients on two-hour round trips to a clinic 50 miles away, community members told Raw Story.

Bridget Ackroyd, a USU senior, said Logan was “secluded” and “in its own little bubble,” with no public transit to reach Ogden, the closest Planned Parenthood clinic that remains open.

The loss of the Logan clinic hurts students who "might be in family situations where they are not able to charge something like an STI test to their health insurance, but they still want to make sure that they're healthy and safe," Ackroyd said.

The Logan clinic is one of two Planned Parenthood health centers in Utah — among at least a dozen across the U.S., according to Raw Story analysis — to shutter since President Donald Trump took office and froze federal funds for family planning services.

“It's just heartbreaking that now we know that those folks who relied on us either have to travel, defer care or figure out other ways to access the kind of health care they've depended on,” Shireen Ghorbani, interim president of the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, told Raw Story.

“It's a big blow to these communities.”

A late-March freeze on Title X grants — federal funds which support family planning services from contraception to cancer screenings and testing for sexually transmitted infections — is just the start of funding challenges for Planned Parenthood health centers across the U.S., with more than 300 of its nearly 600 clinics across the country utilizing Title X funds.

Proposed cuts to Medicaid as part of a Republican megabill that advanced out of the House Budget Committee late Sunday but is still being negotiated between GOP factions would hit Planned Parenthood centers which also receive reimbursement from patients paying for services with Medicaid.

“The dismantling of health care in this country is happening before our very eyes,” Ghorbani said, “and now in this new budget … removing Title X, reductions in Medicaid, all of this is really spiraling us into a very, very bleak future when it comes to access to health care, especially for folks living on the margins in this country.”

Planned Parenthood has lost more than $20 million in Title X grants and $6 million for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, said Laurel Sakai, national director of public policy and government affairs at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

“We fully anticipate that we are kind of just the tip of the iceberg and that Title X funding may fully go away under this administration,” Ghorbani said.

‘Dismantling access’

The Planned Parenthood Association of Utah decided to shutter its Logan and St. George clinics on May 2, after the Trump administration froze $2.8 million in Title X funds.

In 2024, the clinic in Logan served 1,650 patients, and the St. George clinic served nearly 3,000, according to Ghorbani, who said 18 staff members lost their jobs.

Ackroyd, the USU senior, told Raw Story the closure of the Logan clinic was a “loss” for students who used a sliding-scale payment option instead of billing their parents’ insurance.

“If they're getting something like a birth control prescription or an STI exam, and they have parents that might have a very negative reaction if they see that charge, it puts into question the safety of those students that want to be able to access that health care without necessarily notifying parents,” Ackroyd said.

Alternative health care options in Logan are Intermountain Health and the campus health center but both rely on using insurance, Ackroyd said. Plus, she said, patients are likely to be stuck “waiting for sometimes hours and hours.”

Ackroyd said that at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Logan, she was able to get a next-day appointment for an intrauterine device.

“The Trump administration is dismantling access to … critical health care, by restricting these funds,” Ghorbani said. “It means that care goes away. People's jobs go away, and those decisions were made because of the actions of the Trump administration.”

‘Fundamental misunderstanding’

According to health policy nonprofit KFF, Planned Parenthood receives a third of its revenue from state and federal government funds.

But because of the Hyde Amendment, a federal measure passed in 1977, Planned Parenthood health centers do not receive any federal funds to provide abortions — which according to KFF make up just 4 percent of services performed at Planned Parenthood clinics.

In its newly released 2023-2024 annual report, Planned Parenthood confirmed that of more than 9.45 million services performed, 402,230 were abortions, while 34 percent of its revenue came from government health services reimbursements and grants.

Regardless, in late April, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced that defunding “big abortion” was among Trump’s policy priorities.

Defund Planned Parenthood photo (Photo credit: Matt Laslo)www.rawstory.com

Sakai said attacks on Planned Parenthood are “not terribly surprising considering they went after us during the first Trump administration.”

But, “Planned Parenthood is not a line item in the budget,” Sakai said. “Patients choose to go to Planned Parenthood in order to get their health care that they need, and they're trying to take away that right and that choice of people.”

Cara Schumann, deputy director of federal strategies at abortion justice organization, All* Above All, said one in 11 women, particularly those on Medicaid, get reproductive health care from Planned Parenthood clinics.

That means cuts to Medicaid as well as federal grants like Title X and the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program would be a “double whammy” for Planned Parenthood, she said.

“This is them attempting to defund Planned Parenthood clinics for reproductive health care they provide, so cancer screenings, STI screenings, basic contraceptives,” Schumann told Raw Story.

“What it seems is just like a fundamental misunderstanding of what Planned Parenthood does, what health care is, what services people need.”

Sakai said Planned Parenthood was gearing up to work with “champions in Congress” to “fight back against [the cuts] with any tools they have, to show that this isn't really about the budget or about any of their concerns they're pretending to raise about waste, fraud and abuse of the Medicaid program.”

“We know their goal is to shut down health centers, and we know that our clinics are doing everything possible to keep care in their communities.”

EXCLUSIVE: Breastfeeding mom of US citizen sues Kristi Noem after being grabbed by ICE

How the GOP Obamacare replacement targets medicaid recipients

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There was a panel, and now there's a post

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