They Don't Trust The Voters To Vote The Right Way!

Why else do the Republicans keep trying to block voter initiatives? The voters voted for women and LGBTQ+ rights and the Republicans just don’t like that.

Editorial: Fla. attorney general moves to silence voters once again
Sun Sentinel via Yahoo News
By The Editorial Board
October 24, 2023

Attorney General won’t be satisfied with simply banning abortion in Florida, at which she appears close to success. She also intends to prevent voters from doing anything about it.

Moody has notified the Florida Supreme Court that she will ask it to rule against placing a constitutional initiative guaranteeing abortion rights on the November 2024 ballot.

The drive has collected signatures from more than 400,000 voters toward a required goal of nearly 900,000. Sponsors and supporters have spent more than $9.7 million in anticipation of Florida Supreme Court rulings that would effectively abolish abortion in Florida.

The initiative would change the constitution to say that “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare providers.” It would not affect an existing provision dealing with parental notification.

The Republicans can’t have that, their evangelical base would rebel!

Moody telegraphed her strategy in an opinion essay to Florida newspapers, arguing that the language of the ballot summary and the amendment is ambiguous and would mislead voters.

“As any mother knows, ‘viability’ has two meanings when it comes to pregnancy,” Moody wrote.

Some women, according to Moody, relate viability to the risk of miscarriage, while others take it to mean when a fetus can survive outside the womb.

She wrote that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which supports abortion rights, “notes the two medical definitions.”

Of course the Attorney General never thought that they could mean all the definitions not just one.

This is precisely how doctors define it: “Viability is the capacity of the fetus to survive outside the mother’s uterus. Whether or not this capacity exists is a medical determination, may vary with each pregnancy, and is a matter for the judgment of the responsible attending physician.” (Emphasis added).

Moody did not quote that.

They cherry pick and ignore everything else.

We can’t trust the voters to vote the Republican way!

Moody’s quibbling over “viability” is in line with her hostility to giving voters a voice on other controversial citizen-sponsored amendments. She opposes those dealing with marijuana. Even after Parkland, she sided with the gun lobby in persuading the court to not allow a statewide vote on banning assault weapons.

The Republicans and Trump seem to think that the Attorney General are their own private attorneys.

The job of Florida attorney general has long been called “the people’s lawyer.” Moody is not.

She see her job as the enforcer of the Republican ideology.