Several abortion bills await in Tallahassee

Creating jobs and cutting spending may be lawmakers' declared priorities this spring, but that has not dissuaded some conservatives from filing a raft of proposals relating to abortion and the unborn.

About half of the bills come from legislators running for re-election, in a year when Tea Party activists and other GOP malcontents are challenging candidates to prove their conservative credentials. At least one bill was scheduled for a hearing early in the session, by a Republican committee chairwoman who is running for governor.

John Stemberger, of the Florida Family Policy Council, said he's delighted to see this year's show of anti-abortion initiatives. Lawmakers' votes and sponsorship of at least some of the bills, he said, will factor prominently in the guide to political candidates his organization compiles each year for socially conservative voters.

"There's a frustration, I think, in the social conservative community, that Legislature has not been responsive," he said.

Political scientist Darryl Paulson, who is a Republican, speculated that "many of these politicians are engaging in symbolic politics," appealing to their base.

Most of the sponsors insist their bills are not intended to interfere with a woman's ability to get an abortion, though all are Republicans who oppose the procedure.

One such lawmaker is Rep. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, whose bill gives judges new criteria by which to determine whether a pregnant minor seeking an abortion may be permitted to do so without telling their parents. Stargel, a Baptist mother of four daughters who is married to a judge, said current law provides no clear guidance.

"There could be a situation in which a young girl has been coerced or enticed into getting an abortion - perhaps by an older man; maybe a crime has actually been committed," the lawmaker said. "Right now, there's nothing in the law to let a judge really look at a situation and say, we think you've been coerced into this."

The bill also expands the kinds of notice that doctors must send parents about a pending abortion procedure, and limits where a pregnant minor can seek "judicial bypass" of the state's parental notification requirement.

Current law allows a minor to request a waiver from parental notification in any circuit court that falls within the broader jurisdiction of the local District Court of Appeal. Stargel's bill would require minors seeking a waiver to request it at their local courthouse.

That's one of several reasons the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida opposes the bill, said lobbyist Courtenay Strickland.

If a minor's safety or living situation is in danger because she is pregnant and seeking and abortion, she said, "in small towns where everyone knows everyone, going to the local courthouse may not be a good option."

Lobbyist says bill is limiting

Stephanie Kunkel, lobbyist for the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, said Stargel's bill would create barriers and time delays for a minor seeking an abortion. The bill is of concern to opponents since it also has a Senate sponsor.

Stargel said her bill is more limited in its scope than some of its past versions, including a 2008 bill that tied changes in parental notification to a variety of other anti-abortion proposals.

Stargel, who is running for the state Senate seat now occupied by gubernatorial candidate Paula Dockery, said she hopes the bill motivates more minors to talk to their parents about abortion decisions - and gives judges adequate criteria for denying waiver requests in some cases.

State Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, is not running for any office this year and insists his legislation, which expands vehicular homicide charges to the killing of an "unborn child," does not interfere with a woman's right to have an abortion.

Current law applies the charge to the killing of a viable fetus, defined in Florida Criminal Code as being "capable of meaningful life outside the womb through standard medical measures." Courts have generally interpreted that to mean development reached at the end of the second trimester.

Fasano's bill would expand the charge significantly, to the killing of "a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."

The bill was scheduled for a vote last week in the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, but was temporarily postponed when the committee ran short of time to hear it. Dockery, R-Lakeland, is committee chairwoman and said she would reschedule the hearing for this week.

Dockery is avowedly anti-abortion, although some conservatives have challenged that since she refused to support requiring that pregnant women seeking an abortion get an ultrasound. Dockery defends her anti-abortion credentials, saying the bill was an unwarranted government intrusion into private affairs. She cited similar reasons for not noting voting with other anti-abortion legislators for mandating life support in the case of brain-damaged patient Terri Schiavo, which also angered social conservatives.

Bill doesn't target doctors

Fasano, described himself as "a realist" about abortion rights. "I don't want anything in the bill that would in anyway hinder a mother's rights. This is not about abortion ... if it violated a mother's rights, it would be challenged immediately and overturned."

The ACLU's Strickland, however, said the bill "erodes women's rights" by elevating a fertilized egg to the status of fully developed human being.

The ACLU has no problem with enhancing penalties for attacks on a pregnant woman, Strickland said. But the bill, she said, "is ultimately moving us toward establishing personhood" at any stage of development.

Rep. Ralph Poppell, who has filed the bill before, is again sponsoring it in the House. Fasano says it largely codifies a 2004 federal law that responded to the killing of Laci Peterson and her unborn child.

But Kunkel noted the federal law states that it may not be construed in any way to prosecute doctors performing abortions with the mother's consent.

Fasano said he does not intend his bill to apply charges in any case to a pregnant mother, nor does he mean to target doctors. If need be, he said, he will amend the bill to ensure that does not happen.

He was less troubled, however, by committee staff's concern that the bill's wording could cause a person without knowledge of a woman's pregnancy to be charged nonetheless with the "intent to kill" act of capital murder.

"They would have had to have done something very harsh to the mother," Fasano said. "That tells me the person was already committing a crime."