Florida’s 6-Week Abortion Ban Makes It A ‘Terrifying Time To Be A Pregnant Person’

Florida’s six-week abortion ban took effect Wednesday, essentially shutting down the last abortion safe haven in the entire Southeast region of the country.

Abortion providers, clinic staff, pro-choice advocates and lawmakers along the East Coast have been preparing for this day since the Florida Supreme Court greenlighted the six-week ban in April. Despite months of preparation, physicians and staff at Planned Parenthood health centers throughout Florida were gutted.

“It is truly a terrifying time to be a pregnant person in Florida — and that is the devastating reality,” Dr. Chelsea Daniels, a Florida abortion provider, said during a Wednesday morning press conference at Planned Parenthood’s Golden Glades-Miami health center.

Almost all of Daniels’ patients who came to the clinic Tuesday for abortion consultations were over six weeks pregnant and will need to travel out of state if they have the resources. Daniels said she had to turn away patients Wednesday morning while she was in the clinic, just before the press conference started. Many of the patients were just days over the new abortion ban’s pregnancy limit.

“I’ve spent my life and my career doing this, and I have the training to do this, and I have people who do not have the training, expertise or knowledge to do this telling me that I can’t,” she said. “More importantly, telling women that their reproductive freedoms and their bodily autonomy don’t matter, and what matters is their political aims by bad actors.”

Advocates likened the restriction to a near-total ban because most people do not know they’re pregnant at six weeks. Though Florida had a 15-week abortion ban prior to Wednesday, it was still a lifeline for people seeking abortion care in the