Jennifer Canady is the deadbeat mother of 6-week forced birth *and* Amendment 4

Amendment 4 is the only way to immediately begin reversing the disaster for "life" that 6-week forced birth has caused. Canady gave us no other options. Then she abandoned us -- all of us.

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“Leaving forced birth to the states” has significantly increased abortions nationally; maimed and killed more women; killed more babies; forced many more girls and women to bear their rapists’ babies; increased late-term and “born alive” abortions; and made it completely unclear what types of care pregnant women can expect from their doctors for pregnancy complications.

Any “pro-life” person with any tiny shred of personal dignity or moral courage would be working night and day, publicly, to address those facts and mitigate them.

The greatest self-defeating policy failure in American history

Instead, a handful of thoughtless, dishonest, cowardly “pro-life” zealots have delivered the greatest self-defeating policy failure in the history of American political advocacy — with the possible exception of alcohol/drug prohibition or the invasion of Iraq. And it’s only been two years.

They’ve made every pregnant woman and girl’s life more dangerous for no “life” benefit whatsoever. They’ve created active, massive harm for their own fake cause. That’s why they’re so silent and passive today about the “life” outcomes of the policies.

That is why it is inevitable that Trump and the forced birth wing of the GOP will attempt to impose strict national forced birth if given power. It is the only way for the fake “pro-life” movement to even try to salvage any shred of moral self-respect.

And that’s also why Amendment 4 is the only immediate way for Florida to begin to reversing the fact that forced birth is a disaster for the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” people alike. The fake pro-lifers offer no other option. Here is what 6-week forced birth has delivered for Florida, specifically. And it has just started. Check out my article from last week.

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Amendment 4 is the only way out.

It’s 6-week forced birth or it’s a return to what existed in Florida in 2020. Those are your choices. Your only choices. It’s an easy easy choice. And you can thank Rep. Jennifer Canady, R-Lakeland, and Ron DeSantis for that.

Canady’s 6-week ban (conceived with lies) forced the birth of Amendment 4, by taking away 15 weeks as an option

I asked Rep. Jennifer Canady to her face — multiple times — in a 2022 campaign forum, back when she was a candidate, if she planned to vote for moving 15-week forced birth to 6-week forced birth. And she lied — to my face, and many other faces — repeatedly. Key excerpt from my story at the time:

She was asked multiple times in an NAACP forum if she supported maintaining legal abortion at 15 weeks. She filibustered and then lied and declared she would take a passive approach to forced birth law.

Specifically she said: “What happens in the future will be something we need to watch.” This was after I pressed and pressed her to get an actual answer. Eventually the moderator had to stop me from asking.

Canady, of course, went on to “watch” herself sponsor 6-week forced birth. Does this look like a person who did not know what she was planning to do when I asked her?

Former Sen. Kelli Stargel’s 15-week forced birth law brought mindless, mother-maiming, no-exception brutality to maternity care. It inflicted trauma on women carrying fetuses with fatal abnormalities and enduring painful complications at Lakeland Regional Health in the second trimester.

To this day, Kelli Stargel and Lakeland Regional Health continue to blame each other for what both did to Deborah Dorbert. Neither will say for the record if this was a mistake or policy or how often it is happening now. No Lakeland “leader” has ever publicly apologized to Deborah Dorbert for what “leaders” did to her.

I, at least, want to apologize on behalf of every Lakeland citizen who would have prevented it, if we could have. I’m sorry we couldn’t. I’ll keep trying.

I have never met Deborah Dorbert; but I have deep deep respect for her incredible public bravery. I’m sure she’s getting MAGA/”pro-life” death threats. She makes farces out of the cowardice of Kelli Stargel, Danielle Drummond, Marilyn Paul, Bill Mutz and anyone who ever pretended to advocate for “life.”

If I were your king, I’d make all those people watch that video on loop for hours and then go tell Dorbert, to her face, why they did this to her in the fake name of “life.”

If Amendment 4 does not get to 60, I promise you I will be back in front of the Lakeland City Commission, immediately, to make 6-week forced birth and LRH’s cowardice their problem. There’s a mayor’s election in a year. I promise you I’ll make this an issue in that campaign.

And yet …

Kelli Stargel’s brutal 15-week forced birth law was infinitely less brutal than Canady’s 6-week forced birth. It was close enough to Roe to change very little before the second trimester cruelty it gratuitously inflicted on women with dangerous pregnancies.

Amendment 4 would not have a chance to get to 60 if Florida still had 15-week, not 6-week forced birth. Amendment 4 wouldn’t even exist.

Did Canady sponsor 6-week forced birth (and then abandon it) as part of a deal for speaker?

Jennifer Canady carried and gave birth to both 6-week forced birth and Amendment 4. Then she abandoned both — and you as well.

I've now received six or seven mailers for Canady in the last year. Not one of them touts her forced birth law — which is her only accomplishment. She can’t be bothered to parent her 6-week law — or the twin it created in Amendment 4. She doesn’t even acknowledge either exists. She is a moral deadbeat mom to both.

What seems obvious to me — as an informed observer — is that Ron DeSantis told Jennifer Canady in some way: Sponsor 6-week forced birth for me so I can use it to get to the “right” of Trump in the primary; and I’ll make you speaker in the distant future. (Canady and DeSantis co-parent their cratering henchboy Anthony Pedicini. Perhaps he was the conduit. See background on this informed speculation here and here. )

Of course, DeSantis’ presidential campaign crashed and burned because he’s a weak freak who let Trump dominate him at every turn. And that left Canady without any real source of political child support for 6-week forced birth. So she left it in the trash can for other people to deal with.

DeSantis thinks he might still be president some day (he won’t be unless Supreme Leader Elon appoints him). So he can’t afford to be the GOPer who imposed 6-week forced birth and then got cucked by his own state. Out of raw self-interest, DeSantis is cheating and lying as hard as he can to keep Amendment 4 from 60.

Jennifer Canady just wants to be speaker. So her self-interest is weak silence.

But the only “life” either DeSantis or Canady care about is their own political life.

15 weeks - plus full pregnancy care for women - is the first battle in the long war if Amendment 4 doesn’t get to 60

There is nothing remotely radical about Amendment 4. It’s just the return to the status quo and relative peace of Roe, which we all lived with (with fewer abortions and more care for life) for 50 years.

But it will still be hard for Amendment 4 to get to 60 in a bloody presidential year.

Polls show that 80 to 85 percent of Floridians openly reject the brutality of 6-week forced birth with no workable exceptions. But the amendment can’t be literally framed as a simple 6-week, no exception repeal.

I think there are many tribal voters out there looking for an excuse not to give the libs a win — even at the cost of the own daughters, wives, mothers, and sisters. The possibility of 15-week, even though it doesn’t exist, provides that excuse. Human nature is dark; and this is a coin flip.

But Amendment 4 — 60 or otherwise — is 100 percent a good thing and worth doing. It’s a chance to end this war now, before it really starts. Giving peace a chance is always good. It’s also a powerful education tool. Many people have learned things they can’t unlearn.

Thus, if 60 percent of Floridians don’t want forced birth peace yet, Amendment 4 provides very very strong ground for fighting the war to come.

The first step will be rolling 6-week back to 15-week, with full open protection of women like Deborah Dorbert.

The 6-week, no exceptions vs. 15-week plus full emergency care and rape/incest exceptions will split the Republican Party into 6-week Republicans and 15-week Republicans. And that will split open a world of new political and policy possibilities for our state — in protecting women, fetuses, and babies and beyond.

Thanks — and no thanks — to Jennifer Canady, Florida’s deadbeat mother of forced birth.