Fleeing Florida For Freedom

Yesterday on April 1, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the State Constitution’s privacy protections do not extend to abortion, which paves the way for Florida’s fucknut Republicans to ban the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy. And it wasn’t an April Fools’ joke. The ruling was 6-1.

It should be noted that all seven members of the highest court in Florida were appointed by Republican governors, with five being appointed by Ron DeSantis. I assure you that before they were appointed, DeSantis did his homework to make sure they were the trogliest of troglodytes before their appointments.

In Florida, the governorship, the legislature, and the courts are all controlled by Republicans.

But then, the court allowed voters the opportunity to expand abortion access, ruling 4 to 3 that a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to abortion “before viability,” usually around 24 weeks, could go on the November ballot.

Allowing voters to decide if abortion should be a constitutional right in the state may have been a mistake for the conservative court as voters have approved similar measures in Ohio, Michigan, and even Kansas. Even a majority of Republican women believe abortion should remain legal. Last week, abortion cost Republicans a congressional seat in Alabama. Yes, I spelled that right. Alabama, where the state’s Supreme Court ruled that frozen eggs are human beings.

It may also have been a mistake in that they’re putting it on the same ballot as the presidential election. Putting abortion on the ballot will bring out more voters, particularly female voters. This could be bad for Republicans and to make it even worse, there’s another measure on the ballot to legalize marijuana. Maybe in Florida, voters will be dumb enough to vote to legalize abortion while also voting for the guy responsible for the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe.

Until women secure rights to control their own bodies in Florida the closest place where abortion is legal is not Georgia, Alabama, or South Carolina. It’s not even the Bahamas. It’s Cuba.

In Cuba, abortion is free and only a crime when it is done for profit, outside of health institutions, by non-medical staff, or against a woman’s will. The infant mortality rate in Cuba is 4.3 per 1000 live births (2015) which is lower than that in the USA, 5.7.

Cuba is not a bastion of freedom, but it says a lot that reproductive rights is recognized as healthcare and a freedom while in Florida, the decisions to restrict it were made by fundamentalist zealots who use religious reasonings.

Refugees are fleeing the one-party fascist state of Cuba only to land in the one-party fascist state of DeSantis.

Creative note: I googled to see if Cuba had snakes because a lot of islands don’t, like New Zealand, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Ireland. But, Cuba has snakes. It also has crocodiles.

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