Grizzle [the pro-choice Florida state Senator] was mystified by the opposition. She feared for every woman in South Florida whoopened the Yellow Pages to find an abortion clinic. To her, the issue wasn't choice; it was safety. And hadn't the political war of the last year proved the dominance of the abortion rights lobby? She saw no need to be so defensive. But the clinic operators and their allies refused to take chances. "Once you compromise, they chip away at everything, and you're compromising women's lives," NOW's lobbyist argued.
Her opponents [the abortion lobby] said the state had "not presented one shred of evidence showing that any clinics are dangerous." In a terse order issued six weeks later, Gonzalez threw out the state's request. "What I think this means," said Carres, triumphantly, "is that nothing will be changed, ever." For the most part, she was right. It took Florida 15 years to enact new clinic regulations, and those regulations apply only after the first trimester. For 90 percent of the state's abortions, nothing has changed. Slate
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