Fla. Lawmakers Beat Back Abortion Curbs, Adjourn : Session Ends 2 Days Early

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Gov. Bob Martinez’s special legislative session to seek limits on abortion crumbled under heavy opposition today, three months after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling gave states a go-ahead for such restrictions.

Democratic leaders of Florida’s House and Senate said the Legislature’s work was over. The session, which started Tuesday and was to have ended Friday, was adjourned this afternoon.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate shot down proposals that would have curbed abortion in many ways, including cutting public financing and toughening clinic regulations.

“A right, having been established, is not easily removed,” House Speaker Tom Gustafson said. “Once the right to choice was established and clearly understood . . . the right to privacy established and clearly understood, people do not willingly give up those freedoms.”

The session, first in the nation after the Supreme Court ruling, had been viewed as a bellwether. More than 10,000 demonstrators descended upon the quiet Southern capital to wage the first pitched battle since the July decision that upheld Missouri abortion limits.

The governor’s original goals included banning public financing for abortions, requiring viability tests on the fetuses of women at least 20 weeks pregnant and requiring physicians to tell women seeking abortions about the development of their fetuses.

Martinez conceded his initiative had faltered badly.

“I don’t think it’s a moment for rejoicing,” the first-term Republican governor said. “If anything, it’s a moment of sadness.”

But national leaders of the pro-choice movement seized the opportunity to call the failed session a sign of a turning tide.

“Florida has just sent a message to the nation,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Fund for a Feminist Majority and a former president of the National Organization for Women. “Political leaders are getting a public-opinion message that they cannot, should not, restrict or interfere with women’s rights any longer. And people don’t want any more restrictions on abortion.”

Patricia Ireland, national vice president of NOW, was jubilant.

“What we’re seeing this session is a shift by women’s rights supporters from the defensive to the offensive,” she said at a news conference. “This is one of those junctures where the political climate has clearly changed. This is creating a new wave of feminism that we have not had since the 1960s.”

Ken Connor, president of Florida Right to Life, said the fight is not over.

“What’s next is we go back to work. We field new candidates who affirm the sanctity and dignity of human life,” he said. “We explore the potential for a constitutional amendment.”

The governor had held out hope that tougher standards for clinics--among the least controversial of the bills--would pass. But a Senate committee killed three bills on clinic regulation today, after five other bills died in Senate committee. In the House, six bills met a similar fate in subcommittee today.

A Senate committee also killed a measure to put abortion restrictions before voters in the form of a constitutional amendment.