John,

No woman should ever be put in the position of having personal decisions about her own health and well-being overruled by politicians.

But if you've been reading the news this week, then you know that is exactly what happened to Kate Cox, a woman in Texas who had to go through "legal whiplash" to terminate a non-viable pregnancy that was a threat to her health.

Even though Texas's abortion ban supposedly has exceptions for situations where the health of the mother is at risk, Kate went through two agonizing weeks of lawsuits, court orders and Texas' Attorney General personally stepping in to block her abortion in Texas before she finally had to leave her home state to get the care she so desperately needed.

Anyone who has heard Kate's story can understand how simple the solution should be – the pregnancy was nonviable and it was a threat to her immediate health and future fertility. Kate and her physicians agreed that she should terminate the pregnancy. But nevertheless, the state took every possible opportunity to try to block the abortion and prolong Kate's suffering.

John, after reading Kate's story, I'm sure you are just as terrified as I am for what it could mean for families in Florida if the 6-week abortion ban goes into effect. (If you haven't been following, the 15-week abortion ban is currently tied up in the courts, but once it is enacted, an even more draconian and harmful 6-week ban will automatically go into effect 30 days later.)

We are committed to getting the right to reproductive freedom on the ballot next year here in Florida so that no woman in our state faces the same challenges that Kate Cox had to endure.

To get our proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot, we need to gather nearly a million validated petitions from every Congressional district in Florida, and we are almost there. We've already met the threshold to qualify for the ballot in 8 congressional districts, and are pushing with everything we've got to gather all the necessary petitions by the end of the month.

If you want to ensure families in Florida never have to go through the same hardship as Kate Cox, can you please step up with a donation today? Your contribution will help our petition drive get to the finish line.

Thank you.

– Anna Hochkammer
Executive Director
Florida Women's Freedom Coalition