DeSantis Avoids Saying ‘Abortion’ in Speech Before Florida Anti-Choice Group

Not one to usually mince words, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was surprisingly demure Saturday evening during a speech before one of the state’s most vocal anti-choice groups. Over 40 minutes, the Florida Governor barely mentioned what might be his signature legislative achievement—a six-week abortion ban signed last month—even as the issue is shaping up to be a defining factor in the upcoming Republican presidential primary. 

DeSantis’s speech could not have come in front of a more sympathetic audience. The organization hosting him, the ​​Florida Family Policy Council, is a staunch social conservative group whose motto is “For Life, Marriage, Family, and Liberty.” The group, which was celebrating its annual gala, “welcomed him with a sustained standing ovation and provided a bagpiper in full Highland regalia playing ‘Amazing Grace,’” The New York Times reported. Yet DeSantis offered just a perfunctory two minutes on abortion, and barely mentioned Florida’s recent six-week ban—one of the strictest in the nation—which effectively ended the state’s long-standing status as an abortion outlier in the Deep South. 

For the rest of his address, DeSantis proceeded to play his stump speech’s greatest hits: his opposition to Covid safety measures, championing of the police, and support for banning gender-affirming care for minors. “I really felt like I’d heard that speech before,” a Florida pastor and gala attendee told the Times. 

On the campaign trail so far, DeSantis has been loath to raise the subject, and when he does tout the Florida law, he doesn’t mention the specific number of weeks after which it bans abortions. In contrast to his signing of a 15-week ban last year, which took place before a massive audience at a church, the passage of the significantly more restrictive ban came with little fanfare, late at night in DeSantis’s office. 

DeSantis’s reticence, even among his most enthusiastic anti-abortion backers, underscores the difficult high-wire act he faces as he prepares to officially enter the presidential race. While his hard-right abortion record distinguishes himself from some of his Republican rivals, who have taken slightly less radical stances on the subject, it does so in an environment where backlash to the overturning of Roe v. Wade has fueled Democratic victories across the country, especially in last fall’s midterm elections.  

DeSantis’s most fiery defense of his Florida ban only came in response to a provocation from his main rival and current Republican primary favorite, Donald Trump. In an interview early last week with the online outlet The Messenger, Trump said that “many people within the pro-life movement” feel the Florida ban “was too harsh.” DeSantis hit back at a press conference on Thursday. “As a Florida resident, you know, he didn’t give an answer about, ‘Would you have signed the heartbeat bill that Florida did, that had all the exceptions that people talk about?’” he said. 

Still, DeSantis’s tendency to avoid the subject doesn’t seem to have dampened the enthusiasm of his most hardcore conservative supporters. “He’s giving us action, and that’s what I’m interested in,” John Stemberger, president of the group that hosted DeSantis yesterday, told the Times. “He’s been stellar and historic.”