Florida’s voters were asked whether the state’s constitution should say that “no law shall 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.”

The Amendment 4 campaign has called Florida’s current exceptions unworkable. They ran advertisements with a doctor who said the state’s abortion ban forces physicians to wait until women are on the brink of death to access an abortion.

DeSantis and opponents to Amendment 4 argued the ballot measure's authors are "lying" to Floridians, and words used, like "health care provider" and "viability" leave too much room for "outsiders" and unqualified practitioners to come to Florida and perform unsafe procedures.

A Florida ballot initiative to protect abortion rights narrowly failed, the first defeat for such a measure since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago. The proposal, which would have amended the state constitution,

It gave anti-abortion advocates their first victories since the U.S. Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to the procedure in 2022.

Florida voters Tuesday rejected creating a constitutional right to abortion, a political win for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis that will keep in place the state’s ban on most abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy.