TALLAHASSEE (LifeSiteNews) — The left-wing group behind a failed attempt to embed a “right” to abortion in the Florida Constitution has paid tens of thousands of dollars in fines to the state, agreeing not to continue battling allegations relating to signature collection fraud without expressly admitting guilt.
Last year, the so-called “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion,” stated 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].” It would have required abortion to be allowed for any reason before fetal “viability” and rendered post-“viability” bans effectively meaningless by exempting any abortion that an abortionist claims is for “health” reasons. If successful, it would have overturned all of the Sunshine State’s pro-life laws, including its heartbeat law banning most abortions starting around six weeks.
Abortion, which destroys an innocent unborn child, is always gravely immoral and is never needed nor justifiable for alleged reasons of “health.”
Abortion allies across the country poured millions into the campaign, but with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis leading a fight to defeat the amendment, it finished with 57 percent of the vote, short of Florida’s 60 percent threshold for amending its constitution.
During the campaign, the DeSantis administration announced it would be looking into signatures from “nearly 37,000 submitted petitions” gathered by 35 individuals, following examples of the signatures of dead people and non-matching signatures, as well as reports from people who did “not sign the petition forms submitted in their names” and even forged signatures.
In October, Florida Deputy Secretary of State for Legal Affairs & Election Integrity Brad McVay signed a letter detailing the Florida Department of State (DOS) Office of Election Crimes & Security’s (OECS’s) investigation so far into the allegations against “Floridians Protecting Freedom” (FPF), the group behind the amendment.
“Beginning in late 2023 and continuing into early 2024,” the letter says, the state was “inundated with complaints” against FPF “and its agents. The allegations included reports of paid FPF petition circulators signing petitions on behalf of deceased individuals, forging or misrepresenting elector signatures of petitions, using electors’ personal identifying information without consent, and perjury/false swearing.”
The letter revealed that OECS has initiated “well more than 100 preliminary criminal investigations” into potential fraud, including “thousands” of petitions that were validated despite failing to match the signatures on file and/or having been gathered by “known fraudsters,” as well as “credible allegations” that petition circulators were paid for their work, which is a third-degree felony in Florida. “Several entities linked to FPF were so brazen as to advertise this illegal arrangement on social media websites,” it adds.
On December 20, McVay sent out an interim report on the investigation, which revealed, among other things, that FPF relied primarily on the out-of-state PCI Consultants for signature collection, that the company has not cooperated with requests for information, that it has “become clear that a significant number of paid petition circulators used by FPF were known by FPF’s agents to be fraudsters before being utilized for petition gathering,” and that the circulators have been convicted of crimes so far.
“OECS has also levied fines against FPF for failing to timely deliver completed petition forms (or deliver them at all) to the Supervisor of Elections, in violation of Florida law,” the memo says. “To date, FPF has paid over $186,000 in civil penalties to OECS for violations of Florida’s election laws. A fine for $164,000 was recently paid to OECS by FPF pursuant to a settlement agreement in December 2024.”
Under the terms of the agreement, FPF neither admits nor denies breaking the law, but also agrees not to pursue further litigation against the state relating to the investigation or attempt to collect attorney fees.
McVay also suggested that lawmakers impose a residency requirement for petition collectors, and forbid convicted felons from performing the task, two factors that complicated the state’s investigation.
Up until 2024, the abortion lobby had consistent success since the overturn of Roe v. Wade using false claims that pro-life laws are dangerous to stoke fear about the issue among the general public, most visibly in the area of state constitutional amendments declaring “rights” to abortion immune from future legislation.
After 2020, pro-lifers either failed to enact pro-life amendments or stop pro-abortion ones in California, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Vermont, and Ohio, prompting much conversation among pro-lifers about the need to develop new strategies to protect life at the ballot box, as well as a debate among Republicans over the political ramifications of continuing to take a clear pro-life position.
Florida was just one of 10 states with such amendments on the ballot in November. Pro-lifers defeated pro-abortion ballot initiatives in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota, breaking the abortion lobby’s two-year winning streak, but amendments to embed abortion “rights” in state constitutions prevailed in the remaining seven states.