Things were chaotic for Democrat Lauren Book in the hour before she was sworn in as minority leader of the Florida state Senate. She was getting her hair touched up and helping her 5-year-old daughter pick out shoes for the occasion.
The chaos will only intensify. As Book spoke with HuffPost on the phone while getting ready, she warned of a bitter fight over abortion rights in the next session, with existential stakes for reproductive health care in Florida — and beyond. She was exceedingly clear that it’s time for Democrats to fight tooth and nail to ensure abortion remains legal in her home state.
“This is it. It’s devastating. It’s all-encompassing,” Book said of what’s to come in the 2023 legislative session. “We have to be better and stronger and tougher, but even still, we’re outnumbered.”
Florida, once a safe haven for abortion care in the Southeast, is on the precipice of becoming no different than deep-red states like Texas or Oklahoma on reproductive rights. After a 15-week abortion ban went into effect earlier this year and the U.S. Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade, anti-choice lawmakers in the Sunshine State are poised to restrict abortion even further. And with a Republican supermajority in both chambers and a vocal anti-choice leader in Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), it’s a given that Florida will lose access to abortion ― it’s just not clear to what extent.
Book, a 38-year-old former teacher and mother of two, has been at the center of the fight for reproductive rights in Florida. A survivor of child sexual abuse, she argued against the 15-week abortion ban that provided no exceptions for rape or incest survivors.
Minutes after Book disclosed her deeply personal story on the Senate floor in March, her Republican colleagues went ahead with the restriction anyway, without exceptions for little girls like her. “I have never in my entire life felt more devastated than that vote, that debate,” she said.
The 15-week abortion ban has already gutted access in Florida and the Southeast. Three of the four closest states have near-total abortion bans in effect, while the fourth, Georgia, is battling a six-week ban with a fetal personhood clause in state and federal courts.
Planned Parenthood centers in northern Florida are seeing three times the number of patients they saw before Roe fell, said Laura Goodhue, executive director of Florida Alliance Planned Parenthood Affiliates. Many of the patients are from out of state, often…
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