No. SB 1308
Filed under Healthcare.
Reproductive Freedom; Creating the “Reproductive Freedom Act”; establishing the fundamental right to reproductive health care; providing that every individual has a fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about the individual’s own reproductive health; prohibiting the state from denying or interfering with an individual’s right to access reproductive health care; prohibiting such state and local entities from penalizing, prosecuting, or otherwise taking adverse action against an individual for exercising specified rights, or against an individual for assisting another in exercising such rights, etc.
Plain English Summary
AI-GENERATEDThis creates the 'Reproductive Freedom Act,' a new law declaring that every individual has a fundamental right to make their own decisions about reproductive health care, including contraception, abortion, and fertility treatment.
A pregnant person specifically has the right to continue the pregnancy or get an abortion. This new right overrides chapter 390 -- Florida's existing abortion law -- wherever the two conflict.
Government cannot prosecute or punish someone for exercising this right, or for a miscarriage or stillbirth. No one can be sued -- personally or civilly -- for having an abortion or helping someone else get one.
The law also states a fetus has no independent legal rights and bars local governments from adding stricter limits. Separately, it repeals three existing statutes: one of them is described elsewhere as relating to consent for health care decisions.
AIThe bill declares a fundamental right to reproductive health care grounded in the Florida Constitution's liberty, privacy, and equality principles, and states that this new section overrides chapter 390 and any other conflicting law.
AIEvery pregnant individual has a fundamental right to choose whether to continue the pregnancy and give birth, or to obtain an abortion, and to decide autonomously how to exercise that choice.
AILaw enforcement cannot penalize, prosecute, or take adverse action against a person based on that person's own actual, potential, perceived, or alleged pregnancy outcome, including a miscarriage or stillbirth.
AIA person cannot be sued for exercising these reproductive-health rights, and a person who helps someone else exercise them cannot be sued for that assistance, closing the door on private civil bounty-style suits.
AIThe new law states plainly that a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent rights under Florida law, foreclosing any state-law argument that a fetus is a rights-holding person.
AINo city or county may regulate reproductive health care more restrictively than this new statewide right allows, preventing local governments from adding their own limits.
AIThe bill repeals three existing statutes in full: ss. 286.31, 381.00321, and 765.113. Their text is not reproduced in this bill, so what they previously required cannot be described from this document alone.