WHAT THEY’RE READING: Debbie Mucarsel-Powell Fights for Freedom in Florida

WHAT THEY’RE READING: Debbie Mucarsel-Powell Fights for Freedom in Florida

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is fighting to protect reproductive freedom in Florida against Rick Scott, who backs Florida’s abortion ban and cosponsored a national abortion ban. Floridians will hold him accountable in November.

The 19th: In South Florida, a Democrat’s pitch links abortion, immigration and freedom

• Mucarsel-Powell is drawing on her own family’s own experience to reach voters in this state, home to a wide array of immigrants from Central and South America. The Democratic Senate candidate is urging voters to see Republican policies like the state’s new six-week abortion ban as undermining the freedom they sought in the United States.
• Mucarsel-Powell is the first Latina to run statewide in Florida in a decade, and in a state where 1 in every 5 voters is Latinx, her success depends on her ability to stem GOP gains with that group here in South Florida.
• For voters whose families fled unstable democracies or authoritarian regimes, Mucarsel-Powell said, abortion restrictions will signal an effort to increase government overreach into people’s personal decisions.
• “They know it’s directly linked to violence against women. It’s directly linked to high levels of maternal mortality,” she added.
• Martinez said having the ability to choose whether or not to have an abortion is “freedom of expression, liberty.”
• “For many Latinos, abortion is a decision between themselves, their family, their doctor and their priest,” Wills said to nods.
• “We say in Spanish, las ricas abortan, las pobres se mueren. If you have means, you can get an abortion. If you don’t, you die,” Avila-Guillen said. Voters in Latin America came to understand it “as a privilege.”
• Scott has said he would sign a six-week abortion ban into law if he were governor again… He also will not support the state’s constitutional amendment on abortion, which will need some Republican backing to reach 60 percent support.

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