by Calvin Freiburger, LifeSite News:
Floridians Protecting Freedom, the activist group behind pro-abortion Amendment 4, claims to be a ‘grassroots movement’ but is heavily funded by out-of-state far-left interests, including George Soros, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the SEIU, and the Tides Foundation.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
Left-wing activists, including activist financier George Soros, are devoting millions of dollars to the fight to install a virtually unlimited “right” to abortion in Florida’s constitution, identifying the Sunshine State as a key front in the battle for abortion-on-demand.
Amendment 4, the so-called “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion,” states that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider [i.e., abortionist].” If enacted, it would require abortion to be allowed for any reason before fetal “viability” and render post-“viability” bans effectively meaningless by exempting any abortion that an abortionist claims is for “health” reasons. If successful, it would overturn Florida’s six-week abortion ban.
Abortion, the destruction of an innocent unborn child in his mother’s womb, is always gravely immoral and never needed nor justifiable to protect a mother’s life or health.
The amendment ostensibly says that it “does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.” But many, such as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, have warned that “there’s a difference between consent,” which is what current law requires, “and notification. Notification is after the fact. The consent is obviously a condition precedent. They did that because they know going after parents’ rights is a vulnerability.”
The Daily Caller reports that Floridians Protecting Freedom (FPF), the activist group behind the amendment, is backed by a web of “Democratic-aligned dark money networks, the Soros family, D.C.-based liberal advocacy groups and public-sector unions,” with $40 million in pro-Amendment 4 spending so far having come from out of state.
Among the spending is $5.5 million from the Soros family over the past year; $2.5 million from the Planned Parenthood Action Fund (PPAF) and “Reproductive Justice for All” (formerly NARAL); over $1 million from the California, District of Columbia, New York, and Washington chapters of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU); $3.5 million from the left-wing San Francisco-based Tides Foundation; more than $1.3 million from the Sixteen Thirty Fund; and $11.8 million from the left-wing nonprofits New Venture Fund and Hopewell Fund.
For years, the spending disparity between pro-life and pro-abortion efforts has been cited as one of the reasons for the pro-life movement’s string of defeats in ballot initiative battles over the past two years, and, in this aspect at least, it does not appear Florida will be different.
The Caller reports that two PACs established to defeat the amendment, DeSantis’s Florida Freedom Fund and Florida Voters Against Extremism, have only raised several hundred thousand dollars apiece. Earlier this month, the pro-life group Live Action launched its own 501c4, Live Action Victory, to help defeat the amendment, but it is not yet known how much money it has raised for the cause.
