When Floridians fill out their ballots in November and consider whether to restore abortion access in the state, they will be presented with a series of right-wing claims and speculation about how the measure “would result in significantly more abortions and fewer live births per year in Florida,” could “require the state to subsidize abortions with public funds,” and could result in costly litigation.
“An increase in abortions may negatively affect the growth of state and local revenues over time,” voters will be told as they vote on a measure that would prohibit state lawmakers from restricting abortion before fetal viability or when it’s necessary to protect a patient’s health.
These claims are being presented to voters as part of a purported “financial impact statement” accompanying the abortion ballot measure, thanks to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, conservative operatives such as those at the Heritage Foundation, and judges whom DeSantis appointed as part of the conservative takeover of Florida’s Supreme Court.
Fresh off DeSantis’ humiliating defeat in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, the governor and his allies are trying to stack the deck against the amendment to preserve the six-week abortion ban he signed into law, adding leading language to it as they raise money for a state-level Super PAC to oppose the ballot measure.
While former President Donald Trump called DeSantis’ six-week abortion ban “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake” during the primary race last fall, and has continued to say six weeks is “too short,” Trump recently declared his opposition to the abortion ballot measure, which would undo the state’s six-week ban.
By doing so, Trump has sided with the Heritage Foundation, the organization behind Project 2025. Trump has publicly run away from the controversial personnel and policy program, meant to aid his potential second term administration, specifically over its far-right, anti-abortion agenda.
In the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended federal abortion protections, when abortion rights have been on state ballots the campaigns supporting abortion access have consistently won — even in red states. DeSantis and his allies are hoping to avoid a similar result in the Sunshine State, which already requires 60 percent of votes to pass amendments, and have placed their thumbs on the scale.
After Florida’s six-week ban went into effect, a judge ordered the state’s Financial Impact Estimating Conference to revise a previous financial impact statement it had attached to the abortion access ballot measure. Advocates for the measure had decried that version as confusing and ambiguous.
With the matter back before the Financial Impact Estimating Conference in July, Republicans used the opportunity to write a new, far-more extreme statement to accompany the abortion ballot measure.
“The proposed amendment would result in significantly more abortions and fewer live births per year in Florida,” the statement reads. “The increase in abortions could be even greater if the amendment invalidates laws requiring parental consent before minors undergo abortions and those ensuring only licensed physicians perform abortions. There is also uncertainty about whether the amendment will require the state to subsidize abortions with public funds. Litigation to resolve those and other uncertainties will result in additional costs to the state government and state courts that will negatively impact the state budget. An increase in abortions may negatively affect the growth of state and local revenues over time.”
Lastly, it concludes: “Because the fiscal impact of increased abortions on state and local revenues and costs cannot be estimated with precision, the total impact of the proposed amendment is indeterminate.”
To push through their preferred language, Republicans remade the Financial Impact Estimating Conference — adding a longtime DeSantis aide and political appointee, Chris Spencer, while Rachel Greszler, a policy staffer at the Heritage Foundation, was paid $75 an hour to represent the Florida state House.
The Heritage Foundation’s lobbying arm, Heritage Action for America, had lobbied in favor of legislation establishing the six-week abortion ban, and hailed its passage as a “historic victory in the fight to protect life.”
At a July meeting, Spencer and Greszler both sparred with Michelle Morton, a lawyer for the ACLU of Florida, who had noted: “Normally, when a [Financial Impact Estimating Conference] reconvenes, the panel doesn’t change. It’s made up of full time professional staff pulled from relevant estimating conferences. Normally, the [conference] focuses on these direct impacts of proposed amendments, and normally they cite peer reviewed studies, including competing evidence underlying their assumptions.”
That was not the case here. Spencer, for his part, asserted: “There’s a real outcome here that the state could be forced to pay 100 percent of the costs of abortions every year, tens of thousands of them, that they’re not currently paying for, and I think that’s something material enough that it needs to be considered.”
The state separately paid Michael New, an assistant professor at Catholic University, $300 an hour to speak before the financial impact panel. New’s university bio says he “researches and writes about the social science of pro-life issues,” and “gives presentations on … the positive impact of pro-life laws.”
In written testimony submitted to the panel, New offered his “professional opinion” that the abortion amendment “would have a negative financial impact on Florida.”
“Based on the experiences of other states, there is a strong chance it would require Florida’s Medicaid program to cover elective abortions,” he wrote. “This would easily cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars annually. It would also certainly increase abortions, reduce births, and lower Florida’s fertility rate. There is a body of research which shows that declining fertility will result in long term reductions in tax revenue.”
Jonathan Abbamonte and Parker Sheppard, researchers at the Heritage Foundation, provided data to the panel to back up conservatives’ assertions. They wrote that “the total fertility rate is projected to be about 0.11 lower under the proposed amendment than under a 6-week abortion limit and about 0.01 lower compared to a 15-week abortion limit. Reduced fertility rates would have downstream effects on the size of the labor force years down the road.”
Last month, Florida’s Supreme Court — which allowed the state’s prior 15-week ban to stand, and its six-week ban to take effect in May — blocked a challenge by the abortion access measure’s sponsor to the new financial impact language.
DeSantis previously remade the state Supreme Court, too — reportedly in coordination with conservative operative Leonard Leo, the dark money maven and anti-abortion activist who engineered the right-wing takeover of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Florida governor also launched the Florida Freedom Fund, a political committee that can accept unlimited donations, to oppose the abortion ballot measure as well as a recreational marijuana amendment. As of mid-August, the committee had raised $2.6 million.