MIAMI LAKES, Fla. – Taking questions from members of the media, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responded to critics of a taxpayer-funded website that appears to campaign against an upcoming ballot measure to put abortion rights in the state’s constitution.
The governor doubled down Monday, saying that state manpower and resources are indeed behind the Agency for Health Care Administration site, which proclaims, in large print, “Current Florida Law Protects Women, Amendment 4 Threatens Women’s Safety.”
DeSantis has been working to defeat the amendment, which is a massive grassroots effort to put the question to voters in the wake of Florida’s tightened timelines for pregnancy terminations, now only legal before six weeks.
Speaking in Miami Lakes Monday, responding to critics of the use of state resources to weigh in on the amendment, DeSantis said “everything is above board.”
“Everything that’s put out is factual; it is not electioneering,“ he said. “That’s not inappropriate at all. That’s been done for decades.”
That’s not how abortion rights supporters see it. The page calls them “fearmongers” who might lie.
“If I can sum up this whole fiasco in a single word it would be ‘desperation,’” State Rep. Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, the House Democratic leader, said.
Florida Democrats blasted the state’s efforts to “sabotage” voters’ ability to decide on abortion rights in November.
“If that doesn’t shock the conscience of every single Floridian Dem Republican and independent that state dollars are used to propagate propaganda,” Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said.
Democrats are threatening legal action and are also lashing out that state elections police are visiting citizens who signed the petitions that put abortion rights on the ballot, looking for fraud.
“What does this say about our country when politicians are sending police to peoples’ homes?” Christina Diamond, with Ruth’s List Florida, a group dedicated to electing Democratic women who support abortion rights, said. “These have already been verified.”
More than 1 million people signed petitions to get the measure on the ballot; more than 150,000 of those were from registered Republicans.
