Florida’s Amendment 4 ballot initiative is not about overturning the state’s six-week abortion ban. It is about inscribing an unlimited, unregulated access to abortion-on-demand for the entire nine months of pregnancy into the state constitution.
Trump knows this, which is why he is voting “no” on Amendment 4. Yet the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign and abortion apologists continue to deceive Americans, both about Trump’s position and the consequence of abortion initiatives. Now, prolifers have a unique opportunity to use the focus on Trump to counter the left’s lies.
Trump’s recent pronouncements on abortion policy have left many prolifers distraught. But rather than denounce Trump and hand the Oval Office over to Kamala Harris—the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever—the prolife movement should use the media attention Trump has brought to the issue to expose the falsehoods abortion apologists and the press continue to sell to the American public.
Prolife politicians and activists should begin with the fraud the left and the propaganda press are peddling over Florida’s Amendment 4 ballot initiative. Branded a “Right to Abortion Initiative,” the ballot initiative, if passed, would create a state constitutional right to abortion through birth. Of course, that’s not how abortion apologists portray Amendment 4, as demonstrated by both the Harris campaign and the legacy press’s response to Trump’s recent announcement that he would vote against the initiative.
On Friday, before taking the stage at a Pennsylvania rally, Fox New’s Bryan Llenas asked Trump whether he would “be voting yes or no on Amendment 4 in Florida.” Trump answered: “So, I think six weeks, you need more time than six weeks. I’ve disagreed with that right from the early primaries, when I heard about it, I disagreed with it. At the same time the Democrats are radical because the nine months is just a ridiculous situation, where you can do an abortion in the ninth month… And all of that stuff is unacceptable, so I’ll be voting ‘No’ for that reason.”
Notwithstanding that Trump reiterated his opposition to Florida’s six-week abortion ban, the Harris campaign posted on its X account, @KamalaHQ, “Trump says he will vote to uphold Florida’s 6-week abortion ban.” Harris then used her personal account to amplify the lie, sharing the @KamalaHQ post and adding, “[n]ow he’s voting for an abortion ban in the state where he lives.”
Soon after, the Harris-Walz campaign dispatched a statement from Kamala repeating the fabrication: “Donald Trump just made his position on abortion very clear: He will vote to uphold an abortion ban so extreme it applies before many women even know they are pregnant.”
Given that Trump was on video—the very video shared by the Harris campaign—expressly opposing Florida’s six-week abortion ban, one would think the public would see through the vice president’s lies. But that ignores the reality that the press overwhelmingly supports not merely the Harris-Walz campaign but also Democrats’ extreme position of abortion-on-demand.
Thus, on Sunday we saw NBC’s Kristen Welker repeat the false narrative about Trump’s position on Florida’s six-week abortion ban on “Meet the Press.” After noting that “abortion is front and center this week,” Welker began her questioning of Republican Sen. Tom Cotton about abortion by representing that Trump “now says he’s going to vote to keep Florida’s six-week abortion ban in place, a law he once described as ‘terrible.’”
Unfortunately, after having previously corrected the many falsehoods Welker told about the Biden-Harris administration withholding arms shipments to Israel, the Arkansas senator skipped over the “Meet the Press” host’s fraudulent framing of Trump’s comments.
Yet given that, as Welker noted, abortion is “front and center,” every prolife advocate should use the focus on Trump’s comments about the six-week abortion ban to wake up Americans to what the various state constitutional initiatives do—which is install a regime of abortion-on-demand throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy.
The video of Trump stating his opposition to Amendment 4 made that point, but as Harris and the propaganda press quickly showed, they will nonetheless continue to deceive Americans, here, by pretending Amendment 4 is a ballot initiative about Florida’s six-week abortion ban. It is not.
To the contrary, the ballot initiative would add Amendment 4, entitled, “[l]imiting government interference with abortion,” to the Florida constitution. That provision states that other than parental notification laws, “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”
If Amendment 4 passes, Florida’s constitution would prohibit the state legislature from passing any laws that “delay” or “restrict” abortions before 22 weeks of pregnancy, including informed consent laws or waiting periods. Further, even after the baby can survive on her own outside the womb, the Florida constitution will prohibit any ban on abortion.
Prolifers need to make this point, but only after first explaining the nonsense of the idea that a post-viability abortion is ever needed. Post-viability, the proper standard of care to treat a serious medical condition is the prompt delivery of the baby—not the prolonged late-term abortion procedure. The only purpose a post-viability abortion serves is to ensure you have a dead baby, instead of delivering a live one.
If adopted, Florida’s ballot amendment will ensure precisely that, even for full-term fetuses. That’s because Amendment 4 prohibits the state legislature from delaying or restricting abortions where the women’s health-care provider concludes the abortion is necessary to protect the patient’s “health.” Voters should recognize that the amendment speaks of a patient’s “healthcare provider,” not a licensed doctor, leaving the determination to a wide variety of individuals in the health care field.
More significant is the initiative’s use of the word “health,” which reaches an unlimited array of justifications for an abortion that most Americans would not consider health-related. For instance, the World Health Organization advises that “countries permitting abortion on health grounds should interpret ‘health’ to mean ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.’” Thus, even economic strain or the desire to keep a partner happy provide a supposedly “health”-related justification for a post-viability abortion.
Further, even if a court might limit the meaning of “health” to “physical” and “mental” health, abortion until the moment of birth would remain constitutionally protected by Amendment 4. That’s because the abortionist deciding whether the woman needs an abortion to protect her “mental health” can always rely on the American Medical Association’s position that women suffer worse mental health outcomes from being denied an abortion than from obtaining an abortion.
Trump is absolutely right, then, when he said that Amendment 4 is “radical because the nine months is just a ridiculous situation, where you can do an abortion in the ninth month.” Yet that is precisely what the Harris-Walz ticket supports. Also, unlike Trump, who has also denounced Florida’s six-week abortion ban, Vice President Harris has never professed that it is ever too late for an abortion.
Here, for all Harris’s efforts to paint Trump as the abortion extremist, it is the vice president, Democrats, and their supporters in the press who advance the extreme position of legal abortion until birth. In fact, the overwhelming majority of countries ban abortion on demand in the second trimester, with the United States “one of only 15 countries in the United Nations that permit abortion on demand past 15 weeks of gestation. . .” Polls also show that 65 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be banned at 20 weeks or before.
Trump’s view that the six-week ban is too early likewise coincides with public opinion, with only 36 percent of surveyed Americans supporting a ban at six weeks. While prolife advocates understandably object to such early abortions as they, like all abortions, end an innocent human life, Trump is not the problem: He is merely a mirror reflecting societal views shaped by 50-plus years of abortion advocacy dehumanizing the unborn.
Thus, rather than focus on the Republican candidate’s imperfect views, prolife politicians and advocates would better serve the interests of the unborn by co-opting the media attention spurred by Trump’s comments on both the six-week abortion ban and Amendment 4 to counter the lies of the Harris-Walz campaign that the propaganda press will continue to parrot until November.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion, National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
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