Opinion
The Anti-Abortion Messages Haunting Florida’s
Highways
Credit...
Photographs
and Text by Damon Winter
Mr. Winter
is a staff photographer on assignment in Opinion.
April 22,
2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/22/opinion/anti-abortion-florida-billboards.html
MIAMI —
There was no fanfare, no live broadcast, no backdrop of uniformed
schoolchildren to cheer him on. At 11:27 p.m. on April 13, hours after the
closed-door ceremony, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office sent out an email with the
subject line: “Governor DeSantis Signs Two Bills.” One was titled Causes of
Action Based on Improvements to Real Property; the other was one of the most
restrictive abortion laws in the country, effectively banning abortion after
six weeks.
Early the
next morning, Mr. DeSantis left Tallahassee to resume his book tour and deliver
a speech at Liberty University in Virginia, the conservative Christian bastion
of anti-abortion activism. Even there, he couldn’t find the nerve to mention
his Heartbeat Protection Act.
Mr.
DeSantis knows that banning abortion isn’t popular. The issue has been a losing
one for Republicans in races across the country since Roe v. Wade was
overturned last June. And according to a 2022 poll by Florida Atlantic
University, 67 percent of Florida voters want abortion to be legal in most
cases and only 12 percent support an outright ban. But as the governor prepares
to run for president, he needs to keep hard-right primary voters satisfied.
As I
watched all this unfold, I couldn’t help noting the contrast between the
governor’s seeming desire to hide the abortion bill out of sight with the way
some of the most ardent supporters of the law make their position known.
The
billboards were one of the first things I noticed when my family and I moved to
Central Florida in 2021. We drove around the state a lot, and as we made our
way through the sprawl of the Miami suburbs, across the upper reaches of the
Everglades where a river of grass transitions to a sea of sugar cane, through
the citrus groves of aptly named towns like Frostproof and Fruitland Park, I
was struck by the number of anti-abortion billboards we passed on the roadside.
Recently, I
set out on a road trip to document some of the many billboards standing in the
empty parking lots of long-forgotten motels and strip clubs. I sought out the
signs that loom over early morning commuters at corner gas stations and provide
a little extra income for the Pentecostal churches and boarded-up restaurants
that host them. Along quiet country roads, they keep the cows and crows
company; on bustling, strip-mall-lined boulevards they jockey for attention
with an alarming number of ads for personal injury lawyers.
Right now,
a woman in Florida is about a half-hour drive, on average, from a place where
she can get an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, according to research by
Caitlin Myers, an economist at Middlebury College. When the bill that Mr.
DeSantis signed last week goes into effect, that drive will, for most women,
take over nine hours, much of it along these very highways. It’s a long road
ahead.
Damon
Winter is a staff photographer on assignment for Opinion. He received the 2009
Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.
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