One month since Florida’s extreme abortion ban took effect, women in the state are already suffering. DNC spokesperson Jackie Bush released the following statement: 

“In the month since Florida’s Trump-backed abortion ban took effect, women across the state are already fearing for their health and safety. Floridians are living under one of the most extreme abortion bans in the country thanks to Donald Trump and his MAGA allies. While women in Florida – and in nearly every state across the South – are suffering, extreme Republicans are plotting their next attack on women’s reproductive freedoms. From the Alabama Supreme Court ripping away access to IVF to the Louisiana Legislature criminalizing the possession of abortion medication, MAGA Republicans are making it clearer by the day these assaults on reproductive freedoms are just the tip of the iceberg. If Donald Trump is elected, he wants to take these attacks nationwide. When women in Florida, the South, and across the country head to the polls, they will remember that Donald Trump paved the way for their freedoms to be ripped away. Florida women will not forget.”

Thanks to Donald Trump, women in Florida live in constant fear about their ability to access the care they need.

The Guardian: “This is life and death’: inside a Florida clinic after the six-week abortion ban” 

“State’s fall as the last bastion of access to the procedure in the deep south means women will have to travel farther for care”

“The impact of the ban will ripple across the US. Women who are past six weeks – about 60% of Florida abortions take place after that point in pregnancy – will have to travel at least several states away for abortions, further burdening the relatively few abortion clinics that have survived Roe’s fall. 

“One woman, pregnant from her husband’s repeated sexual assaults, cried on the phone on Wednesday as a staffer told her that she likely couldn’t get an abortion in Florida. The woman, who lived in a state with a near-total abortion ban, was confused by Florida’s ban and overwhelmed by the difficulty of having to travel even farther than she had imagined.

“One patient at Bread and Roses on Tuesday, who asked to be identified by her initial A, was little more than five weeks into her pregnancy. A new mom with a months-old baby at home, A had always opposed abortion, but she had developed heart failure during her last pregnancy. Then she had a seizure about a week after giving birth.

“‘After my condition after my last pregnancy, I realized it’s something people should have a right to if need be,’ A said of abortion. ‘I feel like women should have rights to their bodies. I think it’s cruel, honestly, for people with health conditions, like myself.’”

Washington Post: “When she walked into the abortion clinic Tuesday morning, Kristen thought she’d made it just in time.

“The 22-year-old mother of two had learned just a few hours earlier that a new six-week abortion ban would go into effect in Florida on Wednesday. So she canceled all her plans and found someone to drive her, in hopes of ending her pregnancy before the deadline.

“She was one day too late.

“‘We did an ultrasound and you’re over the state limit,’ said Eileen Diamond, the director of Benjamin Surgical Services International, gently explaining to Kristen that the test showed she was eight weeks pregnant.

“While the clinic could still provide abortions for women more than six weeks into their pregnancies until midnight, Diamond said, another Florida law requires all abortion patients to have an ultrasound at least 24 hours before their procedure. That meant the earliest Kristen could get an abortion was Wednesday, when her abortion would no longer be legal.

“‘Oh no,’ Kristen said, tears rolling down her cheeks as she sat across a desk from Diamond in a consultation room. ‘No. No.’”

Florida’s extreme abortion ban means that many women have to travel hundreds of miles to access care and shoulder the travel costs.

Washington Post: “The average Florida resident now lives about 590 miles from the nearest clinic that offers abortions after six weeks and will need to wait nearly 14 days to end her pregnancy past that point — up from an average 20-mile drive and five-day wait before the ban, the data shows.”

Common Dreams: “The ban has forced around 7 million reproductive-age women in Florida and nearby states to travel farther if they need an abortion after six weeks, with the average woman now needing to drive for over seven more hours than before. The paper also found that the ban impacted a larger proportion of Black and low-income women when compared with national demographics.

“Fort Lauderdale clinic director Eileen Diamond recounted the story of one woman who had traveled from Houston to Florida in search of an abortion, only learning after an 18-hour drive that Florida had passed its six-week ban. The woman, who was nine-weeks pregnant, then had to drive at least another 12 hours to Virginia and another 17 home.”

Washington Post: “But leaving the state is not a solution for everyone, even if the trips are fully funded. Most of the women Diamond spoke to Tuesday were wary of her proposal. Who would look after their children while they were gone, they wanted to know? What if they had a pregnancy complication on the plane?

“Ilona said she hemorrhaged severely after a previous Caesarean section. She was terrified of bleeding out in the air.

“‘I almost died,’ she said. ‘And now they’re forcing women to travel in these unsafe situations.’”

WUSF: “Advocates that help people access abortions are advising them to travel further to places like Virginia, Illinois or Washington, D.C. That will become increasingly difficult if clinics in states with expanded abortion access struggle to accommodate the influx of patients.

“‘We’re estimating about 90% of our callers are going to need to go out-of-state and that we’ll have a large increase in callers because this is going to be a whole new cost for people seeking abortions,’ says McKenna Kelley, a volunteer board member with the Tampa Bay Abortion Fund.”

Latinas are disproportionately suffering the impact of Trump’s extreme abortion bans, especially Latinas and immigrant women living in Florida, Texas, and Arizona.

National Partnership for Women & Families: “Florida is home to 1.4 million Latinas of reproductive age – 9 percent of all Latinas of reproductive age in the country and 21 percent of Latinas who live in these 26 states [impacted by current or likely abortion bans].”

Axios Miami: “Even as Miami-Dade County has shifted right in recent years, support for abortion rights has remained resilient among its majority Latino population, despite the group’s strong religious views and typically conservative politics.”

NBC News: “Women across Florida are encountering the new ban, but abortion rights advocates say immigrants in the state and in this county — which has the nation’s highest share of foreign-born residents according to census data — will feel the impact more acutely. They may face language barriers, for instance, or have jobs without paid time off. And for those who lack legal documentation, the hurdles are magnified.”