Florida House Passes Several Restrictive Abortion Measures

Los Angeles Times/Orlando Sentinel: Florida House passes anti-abortion legislation, by Kathleen Haughney:

After hours of emotionally fraught debate, the Florida House overwhelmingly approved a range of new abortion measures that would restrict health-insurance coverage of the procedure, ban most abortions after a fetus is "viable," and require women seeking an abortion to first review an ultrasound in hopes that they would reverse their decision after seeing the images.

The focus of the debate was the "ultrasound" bill, passed last year but vetoed by then-Gov. Charlie Crist. Rep. James Grant revealed that his parents were told that he was going to be born severely disabled, and he said they decided to go through with the pregnancy because "they believed in life." There was no reason, he said, for women not to understand the status of the fetus when they seek an abortion. . . .