Florida Chief Justice Pushes Fetal Personhood At Argument For Abortion Amendment

[In It to Win It]

TPM

During Wednesday’s arguments over the language of a proposed ballot initiative to protect abortion rights, Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz kept returning to a well neither side had briefed.

“It talks about ‘all natural persons are equal before the law and have unalienable rights’ — I don’t know that I could affirmatively say that the term ‘natural person,’ as a matter of just ordinary meaning, doesn’t include the unborn,” Muñiz said. “We certainly talk about the unborn that way.”

Muñiz was quoting from one of the earliest passages in Florida’s constitution that says that all natural persons “are equal before the law and have inalienable rights, among which are the right to enjoy and defend life and liberty, to pursue happiness, to be rewarded for industry, and to acquire, possess and protect property.” If this passage applied to “the unborn” — or in non-anti-abortion political speak, embryos and fetuses — abortion at every stage would be murder. This is a state-level version of fetal personhood, the anti-abortion white whale.

While Muñiz was eager to promote his radical interpretation of the state constitution, Florida, even under its hard-right regime, does not presently embrace it. The state currently has a 15-week abortion ban, with a six-week one tangled up in court. If the state was operating under his preferred approach, abortion would likely be banned completely.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (R) had asked for the state Supreme Court to issue an advisory opinion on whether the text of the proposed ballot initiative — titled “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion” — was misleading or contained multiple subjects. The proposed amendment states that no law shall “prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health.”