Behind the Desperate Attempt to Defeat Abortion-Rights Amendment: GOP’s Contempt for Women’s Autonomy

By Diane Roberts

The United States might soon elect its first female president.

If that happens, it will be no thanks to the self-loathing women reluctant to vote for her.

As one said in a focus group run by Never Trump Republicans: “I don’t feel as though a woman belongs in the presidential seat.” Women “think with our heart, mostly, over our mind, and that’s not what we need right now.”




A young woman wearing a “Say No to the Hoe” T-shirt at a rally in Pennsylvania told the Washington Post, “When I sleep at night, I want a man running our country,” adding, “Men are stronger. Women are hormonal.”

But none of these female misogynists come close to the contempt exhibited by the men who think God ordained them to rule the world — and women.

Former Fox “News” host Tucker Carlson warmed up for Donald Trump at a rally in Georgia, crowing about how “dad” is coming home to teach the vice president of the United States a sharp lesson: “You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now.”

Nice, huh?

Of course, Trump is America’s undisputed champion sexist, a Me-Too monster and adjudicated rapist who began his original run for the White House by attacking a debate moderator (“blood coming out of her wherever”) and carries on lobbing gendered insults at the Democratic nominee, calling her “stupid” and “nasty,” and suggesting she slept her way to the high office.




Trump’s mini-me, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, also despises women: Indeed, his disregard for us and our right to determine what happens with our own bodies is nothing short of obsessive.

Any means necessary

DeSantis knows the majority of Floridians — like the majority of Americans — support a woman’s right to choose whether to have a baby, and he’s so scared Amendment 4 will pass he’s resorting to using every dirty trick in the patriarchal book to stop it.

A new University of North Florida poll shows 60% of voters are in favor of enshrining the right to abortion in the state Constitution.

That’s the minimum required to pass. Around 8% say they “don’t know” or are “undecided.” It’s close.

So, DeSantis has thrown himself, his administration, and a not-inconsiderable amount of your money into defeating the amendment by any means necessary, including lying, spending state money unlawfully, and violating the First Amendment.

Pro-Amendment 4 groups have been running television ads — normal election-year stuff — that feature a woman called “Caroline” who’d been pregnant when she was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer. To be treated with chemotherapy, she had to get an abortion.

If Florida’s six-week law had been in effect when she found out how sick she was, she would likely have been denied the right to end her pregnancy. It could have killed her.




Other Florida women, now subject to DeSantis’ de facto abortion ban, have nearly died because doctors, fearing they could be prosecuted under state law, hesitated to intervene even as theirr patients became infected and nearly bled to death.

DeSantis, the Florida Department of Health, and the quack who calls himself the state surgeon general, are running around pitching hissy fits over the Amendment 4 campaign, claiming “Caroline’s” story is fake: nothing more than pro-abortion liberal lies.

‘The First Amendment, stupid’

Lawyers in DeSantis’ office drafted cease-and-desist letters to broadcasters, threatening them with criminal charges if they didn’t take down the ads.

That is not legal.

Indeed, John Wilson, general counsel to the state DOH, resigned rather than participate in the governor’s assault on media freedom.

“A man is nothing without his conscience,” he said.

Federal Judge Mark Walker was also unimpressed, temporarily barring the state from trying to strong-arm broadcasters and “trampling” on free speech.

In his order, Judge Walker wrote, “To keep it simple for the state of Florida, it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”

Maybe Ron DeSantis slept through class at Harvard Law, or maybe he just figures he can flout the Constitution whenever he feels like it.

He’s sent his “election police” to intimidate people who signed petitions to get reproductive rights on the ballot.

He mandated an absurd “Impact Statement” appear on the ballot right below the amendment itself, claiming more abortions means fewer people in Florida and thus less money.

And it might be the state will choose to sue over the right to abortion (no matter what the voters decide) and that will cost the state — that is, you, taxpayer! — more money.

Plus, what if somehow the state is forced to subsidize abortions, even though the amendment says nothing about that?

DeSantis claims that because the ACLU filed a lawsuit in Michigan challenging that state’s ban on public funding for abortions means the same thing will happen in Florida and the end of the world will be at hand.

Never mind that Michigan law applies only to, er, Michigan.

Goons

Now DeSantis and a goon squad of anti-choice doctors, dressed in immaculate white lab coats, are barnstorming the state from Jacksonville on down, railing against Amendment 4.

Did I mention taxpayers are footing the bill for all this?

In Coral Gables, the Archbishop of Miami prayed over the governor and the doctors, though when it comes to questions involving children, I’m not sure the Catholic Church has a whole lot of credibility.




Neither does Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, who has adopted the same wild-eyed crazy lady act as the Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake or the dog-shooting Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, exhorting the faithful, “We cannot go to church and pray like Christians and turn around and vote like atheists.”

If you know the New Testament (which the DeSantis administration clearly does not), you’ll recall that there’s not a single word in there about abortion.

The governor is becoming increasingly hysterical, calling Amendment 4 “radical,” “dangerous,” and that, since it requires parental notification, but not parental consent, if a minor wants an abortion, teenaged girls will run amok terminating pregnancies all over the place.

Far better their mothers and fathers force them to have a baby at age 14 or 15 or 16.

It’s the wages of sin, right?

Even worse, DeSantis says, Florida will become “this major abortion tourist destination.”

I thought we loved tourists in this state.

But we don’t love women.

We don’t trust women, even with their own bodies.

It’s 2024 and we still have people who think women can’t run a country (tell it to Margaret Thatcher) or should be disciplined when men decide they’re “bad little girls.”

Who knows what will happen on Nov. 5, but it may be the misogynists and the autocrat-wannabes getting the spanking.

Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983, when she began producing columns on the legislature for the Florida Flambeau. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the St. Petersburg Times–back when that was the Tampa Bay Times’s name–and a long-time columnist for the paper in both its iterations. She was a commentator on NPR for 22 years and continues to contribute radio essays and opinion pieces to the BBC. Roberts is also the author of four books.