Washington- Florida health regulators issued a new rule Thursday clarifying exceptions to the state’s six-week abortion ban, detailing permitted treatments for certain medical conditions that endanger the pregnant woman’s health and the fetus.
The state Agency for Health Care Administration’s rule comes a day after Florida’s. new restrictions on abortion came into force. With the new state law, access to abortion is severely limited in the Southeast.
The measure clarifies that treatments for ectopic pregnancy and trophoblastic tumor, a rare tumor that forms where the placenta attaches to the uterus, are not considered abortions. It also states that if a doctor attempts to induce labor to treat premature rupture of membranes and the fetus does not survive, it is not considered abortion.
These conditions can occur after six weeks of gestation and “may present an immediate danger to the health, safety, and well-being of women and unborn children” in hospitals and abortion clinics if not immediately addressed. processed, according to state regulators.
The agency said it initiated rulemaking to “guard against any immediate harm that may occur to pregnant women due to misinformation,” and blamed the media, the Biden administration and groups for defense of perpetuating a “deeply dishonest whistleblowing campaign” to misrepresent state abortion law. . The emergency rule is necessary “to ensure the health, safety, and well-being of pregnant women and unborn babies during medical emergencies,” according to the Agency for Health Care Administration.
Florida’s six-week ban was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year, but did not take immediate effect as the state Supreme Court considered a challenge to a separate measure banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. This 15-week restriction was passed by the state legislature in April 2022, months before the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The Florida Supreme Court in early April maintained the 15-week banpaving the way for the more restrictive six-week law to come into force.
The ban includes exceptions for rape, incest and human trafficking up to 15 weeks of pregnancy. It also allows doctors to terminate a pregnancy if necessary to save the mother’s life or prevent “a serious risk of significant and irreversible physical impairment.”
However, supporters of abortion rights have warned that the law is indeed a near-total ban on abortion, as many women do not know they are pregnant until after six weeks of gestation.
Since the Supreme Court dismantled the constitutional right to abortion in June 2022, 14 states have banned abortion with few exceptions. Seven others ban abortion during the first 18 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization supportive of abortion rights.
Many doctors in states with strict abortion restrictions have struggled to adapt to the narrow exceptions to the bans. The Supreme Court last week considered a case according to which Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion against a federal law that requires hospitals to provide stabilizing care to patients facing medical emergencies. The Biden administration has argued that under this federal law, stabilizing treatment can be abortion treatment and that, in those cases, the federal measure overrides state laws restricting access to abortion.
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