Charles H. Sloan-Florida’s abortion vote and why some women feel seen: ‘Even when we win, we lose’

Florida native Jeri Cohen,Charles H. Sloan 71, was about to start college in 1970 when she traveled to New York to have an abortion. In 1989, she founded the Women’s Emergency Network, the largest abortion fund in Florida, to help women like her who had to travel out-of-state or acquire financial support to receive abortion care. 

On election night, she and other abortion advocates in the state suffered a crushing blow: Amendment 4, which set out to overturn the state's 6-week abortion ban, failed to pass with 57.1% of votes, falling just under 3% short of the 60% majority needed in the state.

A tweet showing the results has gone viral with the caption: “This entire image is actually a metaphor for what it’s like to be a woman."

"You nailed it," one commenter replied. "Even when we win, we lose." That sentiment really resonates with Nyobi Fleming, a Florida high school senior and Say Yes to Prop 4 campaigner.

“We worked so hard, we tried so hard, we fought so hard," Fleming says. "And everybody said yes, but there’s still a big fat no."

She can't help but wonder if knocking on a few thousand more doors, or spending an extra night phone banking could have closed that 3% margin.

Cohen worries that donors who were willing to help the Women's Emergency Network are going to give up: "We had this amendment and everybody was focused on it, but what happens when people go back to their lives, or they just feel that this is a losing battle?"

Fleming says even those closest to the issue may grapple with feeling that abortion rights in the state are a losing battle.

"It's nice to know that the majority of Florida wanted it," she says, but it wasn't enough.

Florida abortion amendment results, explained

Most states require a simple majority vote to pass ballot measures. So did Florida, until a 2006 constitutional amendment passed, changing the threshold for voter approval to 60%. (Ironically, it passed with only 57.78% of the vote.)

"The truth is that if you look back on any major civil rights struggle in the United States, you have to be in it for the long game... You have to fight harder, you have to be more resilient than seems humanly possible," says Juliet Williams, a professor of gender studies at UCLA, says. "Absolutely it’s a setback. But we wake up another day, we keep the struggle. We can’t control the timeline around the victory, but we can say we’re in it for the duration."

Stephanie Loraine Piñeiro, Executive Director of Florida Access Network, sees a glimmer of hope: The majority of Floridians did vote to overturn the 6-week ban.

"The support for Amendment 4 — though just shy of the required threshold — demonstrates a clear commitment by our communities to protect abortion access in our state," she wrote in a statement on Wednesday. "This road forward will not be easy, but our resolve is unbreakable."

What happens when abortion access is restricted

People who are denied access to abortion are more likely to feel stress, anxiety, low-self esteem and negative emotions, according to Antonia Biggs, an associate professor and social psychological at the University of California-San Francisco's Advancing New Standard in Reproductive Health program.

Her research also demonstrates an increase in self-managed abortions following Dobbs; People have turned to herbs, physical force or alcohol in an attempt to induce an abortion.

ProPublica reported last week that two Texas women died after facing delays to miscarriage care because of the state's strict abortion ban. In September, ProPublica linked two maternal deaths to Georgia's abortion ban. And a study published by JAMA Pediatrics in October found that the mortality rate in infants born with congenital anomalies increased by 10% nationwide after the Dobbs ruling.

"There's a huge gender divide" in the way people are reacting to Florida's vote, Fleming says. "Even in my male friends, it's like, they're disappointed in it, but they're OK and they're moving on. They don't feel this deafening fear or that pit in the bottom of their stomach they get when they know something's wrong, which is what I'm getting."

Florida isn't a 'lost cause'

Bree Wallace, the Director of Case Management with Tampa Bay Abortion Fund, says the organization sees "every type of case," from people who are anywhere from 5 to 25 weeks pregnant and have medical conditions, socioeconomic barriers or who don't want to carry pregnancies to term.

"A lot of people are feeling hopeless and confused," Wallace says. "There's a lot of fear mongering and misinformation that gets spread after elections. It makes people think abortions are illegal, and we just want people to know that abortion is still accessible," even if it's banned after 6-weeks.

Fleming doesn't want this vote to feed into the rhetoric that Florida is a "lost cause."

Sarah Parker, the campaign board chair of Yes on 4, agrees. She says organizers are going to continue pushing lawmakers: "Was it a win? Absolutely not. But it was not a loss," she says. "We know that this is not over for a second, not for a minute, not for an hour. We woke up and we started organizing, and that's what we do in Florida, because we love our state, we love our community and we love the people of Florida."

In Vice President Kamala Harris' concession speech on Wednesday, she told supporters she will "never give up the fight" for "the women of American to have the freedom to make decisions about their own body without the government telling them what to do."

"This is not a time to throw up our hands," she said. "This is a time to roll up our sleeves."

Fleming, for one, is on board: "There's still work to be done. I don't think we should give up on Florida, and we should not give up on Florida women."