Florida’s Jews Are Anxious About Election Day, but Not for the Reason You’d Think

To many Jews, this is more than just a campaign for reproductive freedoms that had seemingly been a given for half a century. Rather, it is a moment of truth that makes them wonder whether the Sunshine State, a mecca of Jewish migration for decades, is beginning to look less like a New York breakaway in the tropics and more like the conservative Deep South – if not a dystopian state out of a Margaret Atwood novel.

Since October 24, when early voting started, activists have started showing up not to promote a presidential candidate but to reportedly intimidate Floridians to “Vote No on 4.” The airwaves are full of relentless ads for and against the measure, but mostly against – many of them directly promoted by Gov, Ron DeSantis himself.

If passed, Amendment 4 would add language to the Florida constitution dictating that its legislature cannot pass a law that would “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.”

Guren Rodriguez, who lives in Miami, has spent the last few years forging alliances with pro-choice Floridians of many faith traditions in their campaign to try to convince the Republican-dominated, male-majority state legislature not to curtail abortion rights – at least not in such a draconian way.

In trips to Tallahassee, the state capital, she explains to the uninitiated that the Jewish position on when life begins differs from that of many Christians, who believe that it begins at conception.

“I told them that in Judaism we don’t believe in life until the first breath is taken,” she recounts. “And all of them were like, ‘Oh my gosh, we had no idea that that’s what Jews believe – we figured they held the same position as the Catholics.’”

Even more difficult, Guren Rodriguez says, is trying to get legislators to see why the Jewish community is at odds with a law that prohibits abortion after six weeks, a point at which many women do not even realize that they are pregnant. The six-week ban also threatens the use of in vitro fertilization and prenatal testing for those who do want to have children.

“I testified in front of two different committee meetings, and I tried to make clear that the lawmakers’ ban is fueled by their religious beliefs,” she says. “Not only is that a bad choice for health care, but it’s an infringement on our freedom of religion – not just on Jews, but Muslims, Hindus and other minority religions.”

To be sure, not all Jewish Americans are pro-choice, but the overwhelming majority are. The Pew Research Center found that 83 percent of Jews surveyed say abortion should be legal in most or all cases. While there is daylight among the various streams of Judaism, including Orthodoxy, all take both the physical and mental health of the mother into consideration.

As such, many leaders across the Jewish community argue that Florida’s near-total abortion ban is a blurring of the church-state separation that America has promised since the ratification of the Constitution in 1788.

“We believe that the Jewish tradition says something specific about this issue: Access to abortion is not just essential but it’s crucial to our religious freedom,” says Rabbi Greg Weisman of Temple Beth El in Boca Raton.

He has been spearheading the South Florida Jewish community’s reaction to the rapid evaporation of abortion rights in the state, and his Reform synagogue alone collected 6,000 signatures as part of a statewide effort to put the question on the ballot this fall.

Close to a million signatures were collected – more than legally required to get on the ballot – but multiple state institutions under DeSantis are working to derail the effort even as voters go to the polls, alleging that there were violations in the petition-gathering.

DeSantis even tried to get some of the TV ads supporting Amendment 4 banned, but lost that battle this week when a federal judge blocked his efforts to do so, citing free speech.

When Weisman meets with other clergy and religious folks around the state, he explains the Jewish position less as pro-abortion and more as pro-access. He stresses that Jewish law makes clear that the life of the woman carrying the fetus takes precedence.

“I’ve met with people on both sides of the aisle and of many faiths to try to convince them of why abortion needs to stay legal and why the Jewish community is in favor of abortion access,” he says. He watched how, in two years, Florida went from having abortion access up through viability – usually considered to be 24 weeks of pregnancy – to 15 weeks, and finally, just six weeks.

“The law has enshrined the beliefs of some religious Floridians,” he says. “As a member of a religious minority, I really feel threatened by that. As a clergy person, even counseling someone on how to get an abortion might be actionable in the future.”

Shira Zemel, director of the National Council of Jewish Women’s Jews for Abortion Access campaign, has been working the phone a lot these days. She’s based in Washington, but she and other advocates call voters in Florida to try to convince them to vote for Amendment 4.

They have made about 8,000 calls for Florida and also sign up for text banking – an increasingly popular campaign activity since many people no longer pick up a call from unknown callers, but texts get through.

“What’s been really interesting is that when you speak to a voter, they often say they’re going to vote because of the ballot measure,” Zemel says. “When this question is put to voters, it’s galvanizing. We convened the entire Jewish community on this issue. I think people will turn out and vote for their essential freedoms.”

At least, that was the theory behind putting the question on the ballot. A Pew poll just after the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022 found that 62 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Another poll found that two-thirds disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision. Around this time last year, some 75 percent of Florida voterseither somewhat opposed or strongly opposed the state’s six-week abortion ban.

Polls this week, however, are coming in far lower than that. A Florida Atlantic University poll showed 58 percent support for the amendment, while St. Pete Polls put it at 54 percent. Although that would still constitute a majority, in Florida a ballot measure needs to pass a 60 percent threshold, which is unusually high.

Still, why did support seemingly fall off a cliff? Advocates for Amendment 4 point to the disinformation campaign by DeSantis, who has deployed his own Department of Health to lobby against the measure. The actual ballots even include an additional financial impact statement – a block of wording that seems blatantly focused on dissuading Floridians from voting for the amendment.

“The politicization of these financial impact statements erodes public trust in our institutions and threatens the integrity of every future ballot measure,” Michelle Morton, staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida, wrote in a condemnation of the August court decision that allowed that problematic wording to stay on the ballot.

Indeed, a less-informed voter might mistakenly conclude that Amendment 4 would do away with parental consent, provide public funding for abortions and “negatively impact the state budget,” the financial impact statement claimed.

“There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” says Guren Rodriguez. “It doesn’t surprise me that the state uses taxpayers’ funds to try to influence people’s decisions.” Although she fervently hopes the measure will pass, she realizes it may not and fears that in the next legislative season, DeSantis and friends will work to end citizen-generated ballot initiatives altogether.