The New York Times: “Abortion bans have become a politically toxic issue for Republicans in elections across the country. But in Florida, the court decisions this week have upped the ante, ensuring that the issue will play a defining role in the November elections.”
The Florida Supreme Court allowing abortion rights on the November ballots while greenlighting a near-total abortion ban places a spotlight on Anna Paulina Luna and María Elvira Salazar’s own extreme anti-abortion records.
While vulnerable Republicans across the country scrub theirwebsites of anti-abortion mentions, Luna and Salazar are no longer able to avoid facing their draconian records head on — especially in a state where 67% of people support abortion rights.
The court rulings are prompting inconvenient questions about Luna and Salazar’s records that the increasingly vulnerable congresswomen are desperate to avoid. Luna is a self-described “pro-life extremist” who celebrated the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Salazar also supported the decision and voted to restrict abortion medicine access nationwide.
Now more than ever, voters are more empowered to hold them accountable at the ballot box.
DCCC Spokesperson Lauryn Fanguen:
“Women and families across Florida are facing a backwards reality because their rights are being stripped away by far-right politicians. Anna Paulina Luna and María Elvira Salazar have embraced draconian laws that have forced government-mandated pregnancies — but in November, Floridians will have the opportunity to vote them and their extreme ideologies out of office and protect abortion rights.”
Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a hard-right Republican from Florida, has proudly described herself as a “pro-life extremist.”
“My husband is a byproduct of rape,” she told a conservative student group in 2022, explaining her support for abortion bans with no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. Nobody, she said, deserves “to be the judge, jury and executioner on whether or not he has a right to live or not.”
But the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling this week to allow a six-week abortion ban — and a second decision that would add a proposed constitutional amendment to the ballot in November overturning the ban — could pose political risks for a hard-liner like Ms. Luna.
Now she and Representative María Elvira Salazar, another Republican whose Florida district is not solidly red, will have to defend their records of supporting anti-abortion measures at the national level, with control of the House at stake.
The court’s ruling said that the six-week abortion ban could go into effect on May 1. But in a twist, it is also allowing a vote on a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee access to abortion “before viability,” around 24 weeks. The twin rulings have suddenly buoyed Democratic hopes of picking off House seats in a state that has long trended toward the right.
Abortion bans have become a politically toxic issue for Republicans in elections across the country. But in Florida, the court decisions this week have upped the ante, ensuring that the issue will play a defining role in the November elections.
Ms. Luna is a special case.
“Life does begin at conception, and even something like a chicken can sense danger from a scalpel,” she told “Pro-Life Weekly,” a show on the Eternal Word Television Network, last year. (Ms. Luna said she was so horrified by what she witnessed that she promptly took 60 chicken eggs home with her, hatched them and gave them away to friends.)
Ms. Salazar, a veteran Miami-based news anchor who worked for Telemundo and CNN en Español before running for office, does not share as many vivid personal stories. But this year, she voted to restrict access to the abortion medication mifepristone. Ms. Salazar also voted to eliminate resources for active-duty service members seeking reproductive care, a measure Ms. Luna also supported. Those votes helped both women earn A+ ratings from SBA Pro-Life America.
Ms. Luna and Ms. Salazar both won their seats in 2022, after the Supreme Court had already overturned Roe v. Wade. But with Republicans in control of the House, they now have complicated voting records to defend, and the Florida court’s rulings will put those records front and center in their re-election races.
That bill, the Right to Try I.V.F. Act of 2024, has been criticized by Democrats as too narrow to be effective. The legislation would disqualify states that ban in vitro fertilization from receiving a federal block grant for mothers and children.
No state has explicitly tried to prohibit such treatments. But a February ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that said frozen embryos should be considered children upheld an abortion ban that had implications for access to I.V.F. Such measures would not be disqualifying under Ms. Luna’s legislation.
In a statement, Ms. Luna avoided stating a position on Florida’s six-week ban and focused instead on the November ballot initiative.
A spokesman for Ms. Salazar did not respond to a request for comment about the Florida court rulings.
Since arriving in Congress in 2023, Ms. Luna has aligned herself with the hard right on many issues, but her district is far from it: In Pinellas County, Nikki Haley won 18.5 percent of the presidential primary vote despite having already dropped out of the race against former President Donald J. Trump.
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