Thursday was a sad day for Floridians like Estefany Londoño, who have long advocated for abortion rights in their home state, as the possibility of a six-week abortion ban going into effect later this year started to sink in.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Londoño, 26, said. “People should be able to make those decisions when they’re ready and not because they’re forced into certain situations.”
Latinas and Black women working to keep abortions accessible in Florida worry the new law will result in more people of color being forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term — which often result in worse economic and mental health outcomes.
While reproductive age women of all races and ethnicities are at risk of unintended pregnancy, Hispanic and Black women face a disproportionally higher risk, according to research published in 2020 in the peer-reviewed journal Contraception and Reproductive Medicine.
“The conditions of our state, people not being able to afford abortion care, these are going to keep people pregnant against their will, ultimately,” Florida Access Network co-executive director Stephanie Loraine Piñeiro, who heads the only abortion fund led by queer people of color in the state, said.
The law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis Thursday night will take effect only if Florida’s current 15-week ban is upheld in an ongoing legal challenge that is before the state Supreme Court.
Bienvenido US, a Hispanic conservative national group, celebrated the news on Friday calling it “A PRO LIFE VICTORY!” on Twitter. The Radiance Foundation, a faith-based nonprofit group founded by African-American pro-life activist Ryan Bomberger, shared a post on Facebook celebrating the abortion ban saying, “We won’t stop this #humanrights fight until every life is protected from the violence of abortion and the predators who profit from fear and pain.”
Florida is home to 828,100 Black women of reproductive age. Among the 1.4 million Latinas of reproductive age, 570,000…
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