A longtime Planned Parenthood official in Florida said Wednesday that the organization’s ‘north star’ is to provide care to their patients, regardless of the circumstances. That’s why she says that with the state now banning most abortions after just six weeks of pregnancy, their role will be to help women get reproductive health outside of Florida.
“Our care will be helping patients to migrate out of the state of Florida so that they can find care in states that are more friendly to themselves,” said Barbara Zdravecky, the interim CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida at a press conference held at the organization’s headquarters in Sarasota.
“We’ve prepared a lot of mental health strategies to deal with our staff who have had the opportunity to provide care no matter what, as well as to deal patients who will be incredulous, angry, tearful and not knowing which way to turn,” she said. “We have a lot of resources available for those patients and we know that making sure that their gestational age is authenticated, we’ll help them determine what state they have to go to.”
Zdravecky led the organization for 24 years before she retired at the end of 2017. She recently returned to serve as interim CEO.
With Florida clinics no longer able to provide abortion services with women after six weeks, the closest states where women will be able to access an abortion in the south will be North Carolina, where an abortion is legal up to 12 weeks, and Virginia, where it’s legal through the first two trimesters.
Dr. Robyn Schickler, the chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, said the new law “will only serve to harm our patients,” and said that six weeks is usually the time when people first realize that they are pregnant.
“We date pregnancies from the first day of the last menstrual period,” she said. “That means if someone has a regular period, by the time they miss their period they’re already four weeks [pregnant]. That gives them little time to 1) realize that they missed their period and that they may be pregnant, and 2) to obtain whatever care that they need.”
The new law provides an exemption for victims of rape, incest and human trafficking, which is available up to 15 weeks’ gestation. The law requires that if a woman has been the victim of one of those incidents, she must provide a copy of a restraining order, police report, medical report or other court order or documentation providing evidence at the time that she schedules or arrives for her appointment to obtain the abortion.
Schickler says that those exceptions are not sufficient.
“It puts doctors like me in the place of interpreting laws when we had medical training. We then have to interpret a law to figure out if we can or can’t take care of a patient,” she said. “It’s so hard to know with these bans as a physician what we can and can’t do. Our hands are tied by the politicians who made these laws. And my patients’ hands are tied. They can’t make decisions about their own bodies.”
“Abortion bans are especially harmful to brown and Black people like me, who are already more likely financial, geographic and systemic barriers to accessing health care,” added Dawnyelle Singleton, the organization’s manager of volunteers and community programs, who touted the constitutional amendment on the November ballot which would restore a woman’s right to an abortion up until the point of viability.
That was the situation in Florida until the state passed a 15-week abortion law in 2022. The next year, in 2023, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law the 6-week abortion ban. But that ban got wrapped up in legal challenges for a year. The Florida Supreme Court finally ruled on the issue on April 1, 2024, which allowed the 6-week abortion ban on May 1.
“We are resolute in that we will continue to fight for the rights of all Floridians to access care in the future but the situation that we are facing today is unimaginable, as I said, in the year 2024,” said Zdravecky.
