Editor's Note: If you would like to help defeat Amendment 4, you can contribute here to assist No To 4 with their efforts.
Voters in Florida will have the opportunity to enshrine abortion into their state constitution this year, an effort that Christian and conservative activists are laboring to defeat.
The text of the proposed constitutional amendment, known as Amendment 4, would establish 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 provider.” Opponents of the ballot measure warn that the proposal does not define terms, allowing for virtually all abortion in Florida since “viability” and “health” would be left to the discretion of the “healthcare provider.”
The measure would require 60% of votes in order to amend the state constitution. One recent survey from the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab found that 69% of residents currently support the measure, while a mere 23% oppose the measure.
Christian anti-abortion activists with Abolish Abortion Florida, an organization dedicated to establishing equal protection of the laws for preborn babies in the state, recently launched an entity called No To 4 in order to defeat the ballot measure.
Bonnie Cannone, the founder of Abolish Abortion Florida, said in an interview with The Sentinel that their approach centers on telling the public that “abortion is murder of an image-bearer of God,” meaning that “no state or nation has the right to regulate” the lethal procedure.
She was critical of the strategy from pro-life establishment groups recently taken in states with similar ballot measures. The organizations centered their appeals on the radical nature of late-term abortions and the harms rendered to women, leading some Christians and conservatives to assert that the moral clarity of opposing the murder of preborn babies was not communicated to voters.
Cannone added that she obtained three abortions nearly forty years ago before she was “redeemed by the precious blood of Christ,” leading her to reject the notion that women are victims of abortion, a claim worked into the political messaging from the pro-life organizations and codified into laws passed by their lobbyists.
“I made the decisions, I scraped together the money, I made the appointments, I drove to the kill mills, I laid my body down, and I allowed my babies to be ripped to shreds as they were torn out of my womb,” Cannone recounted to The Sentinel. “Even though I am no longer a feminist, praise be to God, I am outraged by the idea that the pro-life industry insists on special murder exemptions for women.”
