(NewsNation) — Florida voters have rejected a state measure guaranteeing a right to abortion through a constitutional amendment.
Florida Amendment 4 was one of nearly a dozen abortion rights measures that appeared on ballots across the country this November.
Abortion is banned in Florida after the first six weeks of pregnancy under a law that took effect May 1. There are exceptions for pregnancies from rape or incest, as well as to protect the safety of the pregnant patient.
Voters had the opportunity to amend the state constitution to protect the right to abortion until fetal viability or when necessary to protect the pregnant person’s health. The point of fetal viability is around 24 weeks, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
To pass, the measure needed support from at least 60% of voters, a high threshold that supporters hope to reach after collecting nearly a million signatures on the petition to get it on the ballot.
The state sought to challenge the measure, arguing that there are differing views on the meaning of “viability” and that some key terms in the proposed measure are not properly defined. The arguments eventually did not hold up in the state’s Supreme Court, which decided to allow the measure on the ballot.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and other GOP leaders had repeatedly tapped into taxpayer-funded resources to fight the ballot initiative, according to Politico reporting.
The Office of Election Crimes and Security issued a report claiming a “large number of forged signatures or fraudulent petitions” were submitted to get the question on the ballot. The state also announced a $328,000 fine against the ballot-measure group.
Additionally, the state health department sent a cease and desist letter to television stations across Florida that aired an ad in support of an abortion-rights ballot initiative last month. The government said the ad was untrue and creates a “sanitary nuisance” subject to criminal charges.
The group behind the ad, Floridians Protecting Freedom, filed a lawsuit against the state alleging first amendment free speech rights were violated.
State police in Florida also allegedly started visiting the homes of voters who signed a petition to get an abortion rights amendment on the ballot as part of a state probe into alleged petition fraud.
DeSantis defended the investigation, saying police have found evidence that some of the supposed voter signatures were from dead people. However voter fraud is extremely rare, typically occurs in isolated instances and is generally detected. The Brennan Center for Justice reports that most instances of voter fraud are traceable to other sources such as clerical eros and found that rates of voter fraud occured between .0003 and .0025%.
“They’re investigating this, as they should,” DeSantis had said. “Our tolerance for voter fraud in the state of Florida is zero. That’s the only thing that you can do is to have zero tolerance.”
The move was called out by abortion rights supporters who said DeSantis was trying everything he could to block the amendment from getting on the ballot.
“Amendment 4 was placed on the ballot by nearly one million Floridians around the state and across party lines who believe that people, not politicians, deserve the freedom to make their own health care decisions,” Lauren Brenzel, the director of the Yes on 4 campaign, said at the time.
Groups in favor of the constitutional amendment raised more than $60 million to fund their efforts. Anti-abortion groups lobbying against the ballot measure raised about $9 million, though the AP notes that was not reflective of all spending.
Abortion-rights ballot measure supporters across the country raised nearly eight times as much money as groups campaigning against the amendments on ballots across the country.
Abortion is a polarizing issue that was expected to draw people to the polls, potentially impacting the presidential race in swing states, control of Congress and the outcomes of closely contested state offices.
It was a central issue that drove people to vote in the 2022 midterm elections, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In polling leading up to Election Day, abortion had surpassed inflation to be the top issue in the presidential election for young women.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
