On Monday, Florida-based NBC affiliate WFLA-TB took viewers inside a faith-based roundtable where Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who’s running for reelection, made some incredibly bizarre comments. Asserting his “pro-life” identity, Scott told reporters at the roundtable, “Democrats are extreme. They support allowing a baby born, healthy, born alive, to just cry itself to death. It’s extreme, you just can’t believe it.” You’re right, Rick: I can’t believe something that isn’t happening!
As much as I’d like to laugh off Scott’s bizarre, far-right fan-fic of an abortion definition, language like this—equating abortion with killing babies—is exactly what gets abortion providers targeted, threatened, and even killed by anti-abortion extremists. But in the face of the extreme unpopularity of their abortion bans, violent lies are ultimately all that Republicans like Scott have in their arsenal.
Scott is facing a tight reelection race against former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D) and is currently polling just three points ahead of her as of last week. At the same, an abortion rights amendment in Florida is polling as high as 69% according to one poll from the end of July, and 56% earlier this month. The ballot measure, Amendment 4, has stronger support in the state than Scott, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former President Trump.
Scott's also spent this election running an ad exploiting his daughter’s personal IVF story, in order to posture as supporting the fertility treatment, all while voting against a bill to codify a federal right to IVF. And even though Scott has long dodged questions about a national abortion ban on the campaign trail, he co-sponsored a national, 20-week abortion ban in 2020. Further, for the last several months, he’s flip-flopped on whether he supports a 15-week or six-week abortion ban in Florida. And in June, he even voted against a federal right to birth control.
"For over a decade, Rick Scott has led the attack on women’s rights, privacy, and reproductive health care,” Mucarsel-Powell said in a June statement after Scott began running his ad touting his daughter's IVF experience. She cited his support for the state abortion ban in Florida and his support for the 20-week national ban in 2020, adding, "Floridians know that when corrupt politicians like Scott attack one freedom, they never stop there.”
Ever since May 1, Floridians have lived under a near-total abortion ban, which the state Supreme Court allowed to take effect while ruling that Amendment 4 could appear on November's ballot. Before May, Florida was the last state in the region to offer abortion services, at least through 15 weeks. The state provided 80,000 abortions in 2023, which included an estimated 7,000 patients out-of-state patients. Back in June, the Florida Access Network abortion fund said the average distance callers now have to travel for an abortion is over 900 miles. Stephanie Loraine Pineiro, executive director of FAN, called Florida’s ban “the biggest change in the abortion access landscape” since the fall of Roe.
Over recent election cycles, Florida has become something of a Republican stronghold. But in addition to the popularity and momentum surrounding Amendment 4, the closeness of Scott’s own reelection race suggests abortion—which Scott, again, thinks is a baby “[crying] itself to death”—could deeply impact which way the state swings in November.
