Florida clarified abortion rules after enacting ban. Doctors say it’s “gaslighting” and unhelpful – By Nicole Karlis (Salon) / May 8, 2024
The state’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) issued clarifying “rules” after its six-week abortion ban
One day after Florida’s six-week abortion went into effect, the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) issued clarifying “rules” in the face of what the agency called a “deeply dishonest scare campaign and disinformation” by the media, the Biden Administration, and advocacy groups to misrepresent the new law.
“The Agency is initiating rulemaking to safeguard against any immediate harm that could come to pregnant women due to disinformation,” the notice for emergency rule stated. “This rulemaking will ensure health care providers establish medical records procedures that will adequately protect the care and safety of both mothers and their unborn babies during medical emergencies.”
When Kara Cadwallader, who is a family medicine physician in Idaho, saw this news come from Florida, she thought this could be helpful. As a physician in a state with a similarly restrictive abortion landscape, Cadwallader told Salon she and her colleagues have been asking Idaho legislators for something similar — clarifications to address emergency situations.
“And then I read through the actual rules. I think the problem is, they have to be written very precisely from the medical perspective,” Cadwallader said. “The ones that they wrote for Florida, none of those are helpful. They could be. It’s like they took one step in that direction, but many of my colleagues immediately picked up on details that didn’t make sense.”
