Among the many fictions and near-fictions used to manipulate and mislead Floridians about the 4th Amendment, one stands out.

It is the deliberate effort to blur the line between state law requiring parental consent before a girl under 18 can have an abortion and parental notification, which is protected by the state constitution.

The issue is only muddled because the governor and those desperate to kill the amendment limiting government interference in abortion have made it so. It’s deliberate, says state Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando — Opponents of Amendment 4 know how unpopular the 6-week abortion ban is, so they’re taking advantage of misleading assumptions to get voters to decide on extreme examples.

Nothing in Amendment 4 overrides state law requiring that a parent or guardian be notified when a minor girl requests an abortion. Voters in particular gave the legislators the right to create that law through a constitutional amendment which passed 20 years ago.

Amendment 4 does not change this. To the contrary, it clearly states: “This amendment does not alter the constitutional authority of the Legislature to require notification of a parent or guardian before a minor obtains an abortion.”

On consent, it is silent

Florida also passed a law which requires parental consent for abortions in 2020. But the state constitution says nothing about consent. Neither is Amendment 4.

Opponents want voters to believe that because Amendment 4 is silent on parental consent, it is an abusive legal scheme that allows minors to obtain abortions in secret. Gov. Ron DeSantis suggested only that: “Why would you waive parental consent?” he asked in April.

Speculation about girls under 18 having abortions without adult consent is presented as an unprecedented new challenge to parental rights.

But the governor and those who parrot this argument are leaving out an inconvenient truth. A girl under 18 can already get a legal abortion in Florida without the consent of a parent or guardian. She can submit an application to the court to allow the procedure.

This high-profile legal exception to the consent requirement has been recorded since the consent law was passed four years ago. DeSantis and anti-abortion activists know this.

Traffic scare tactics

The facts in the footnotes, however, tend to set up misinformation campaigns and confuse voters about what Amendment 4 actually says is key to the scare tactics peddled by opponents.

take jury rigged financial statement at the bottom of Amendment 4 on the ballot.

The original financial statement did not estimate how much the change might cost and found no hard evidence of the potential costs. That was thrown out. A new review committee was convened, one that included a top DeSantis adviser and a high-profile Heritage Foundation contributor. Project 2025. Disastrous new findings: Public schools could fail. The state could be sued and lose. Medicaid, the taxpayer-funded health insurance program for low-income Floridians, could be forced to pay for abortions for poor women.

Unless none of that happens: At the bottom, even the new committee wrote that it’s impossible to know for sure.

But imagine if he did, voters are told. Imagine 13-year-olds sneaking in to get abortions, or doctors, parents and medical staff accidentally killing newborns, or dentists providing surgical abortions. Imagine a woman claiming that her headache is a medical condition, justifying a nine-month abortion.

Imagine all the worst-case scenarios that will fit into a 30-second ad. And you have to imagine them, because no facts support this nonsense, just hot speculation from people hoping to scare voters into voting no.

Notification is here to stay

However, this is not speculative: the right of a parent or guardian to be informed before a minor has an abortion is essentially enshrined in the state constitution. Amendment 4 will not change this.

Nor will it change the fact that parents have almost unlimited rights over the health care their children receive. Once notified, it would be easy for a parent to block access to abortion care. And violating parental notification would require a judge’s permission — which would be extremely difficult for a teenager to obtain, especially in a way that would meet the documentation that clinics are forced to produce, Eskamani says. She speaks from experience: When she worked for Planned Parenthood of Central Florida, she observed minors seeking abortions. He also agrees that most teenagers would like and need their parents’ support during a difficult time. A national survey of more than 1,500 minors who had an abortion found that more than 61 percent of minors told at least one parent before seeking abortion care. This number increased to over 90% for minors under 15 years of age.

A state Legislature like Florida’s, which has been converted to supermajority conservatism, will never pass a law to eliminate the current parental consent requirement.

Ultimately, if Amendment 4 passes and is later used to argue that the state’s parental consent law should be thrown out, that legal case will ultimately be heard by the right-wing Florida Supreme Court. Any legal challenge to parental consent will almost certainly fail before the court, whose members include three justices who have held that Amendment 4 is not up for a vote and who were handpicked by a know-it-all anti-abortion governor anti-abortion views. Even if existing law is violated by the language of Amendment 4, it will make it extremely difficult for teenagers to access abortion.

If the amendment somehow survives the disinformation campaign promoted by Tallahassee, it would change something more basic. It would protect women, girls and those who love them from a state government intent on dictating decisions about their bodies, their health and their futures.

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The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel editorial board consists of editorial page editor Steve Bousquet, deputy editorial page editor Dan Sweeney, editors Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman and Anderson. Send letters to [email protected].

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