WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The political battle over abortion rights in Florida is heating up with new television ads that are hard to miss.
WPTV is holding the messengers accountable on both sides of the Amendment 4 issue, which would protect abortion until fetal viability if at least 60% of voters approve it.
Earlier this week, we dissected an ad against the amendment.
A group called Floridians Protecting Freedom, which supports Amendment 4, also released an ad titled "Before."
"Before many women know they're pregnant. Before their first appointment. Before a doctor can see anything on an ultrasound. This is when government in Florida has banned abortion," the ad begins.
To address these claims about pregnancy milestones, we turned to the experts on pregnancy: OB/GYNs. Their answers differed based on where they stood personally on abortion policy.
Dr. Greg Marchand, who practices minimally-invasive gynecological surgery in Arizona, calls himself a "pro-life" doctor and has spoken publicly against Amendment 4 in Florida.
"The average person finds out (they're pregnant) between five and six weeks," he said.
Dr. Cherise Felix works for Planned Parenthood in West Palm Beach and supports the amendment.
"A lot of people will find out that they're pregnant somewhere between like eight to 12 weeks," she said.
While Felix said, "most private OB/GYNs won't schedule the first exam until a minimum of eight weeks," Marchand recommends patients come in for prenatal care "as soon as you have a positive pregnancy test."
As for the first signs of pregnancy on an ultrasound, Marchand said, "At seven weeks or more, you'll reliably be able to see a baby with a heartbeat on vaginal ultrasound after five weeks, you pretty much reliably can see a sack."
Felix said that isn't always the case.
"If you've got, you know, abnormal anatomy — fibroids in the uterus, or a patient that's obese, if your machine is not — you know — not the best machine, then you may not be able to measure anything until around six weeks or later."
The next set of claims in the ad calls Florida's current law, "an extreme ban with no exceptions: not for her health, not even for rape."
Exceptions are written into the six-week ban. Those are "to save the pregnant woman's life..." or to "avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function … other than a psychological condition..." at any point during a pregnancy. Those exceptions apply if one, or in some circumstances, two doctors certify the patient's condition in writing.
While some Florida doctors have said they've seen delays or denials in care in the face of these health-related exceptions, Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration sent a notice to providers this week stating, "Florida requires life-saving medical care to a mother without delay when necessary, and the Agency for Health Care Administration and the Florida Department of Health will take regulatory action when a provider fails to follow this standard of care."
READ BELOW: Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration's notice to providers
In a report released this week by Physicians for Human Rights, researchers interviewed 25 reproductive health care providers in the months after the six-week ban took effect on May 1.
"Clinicians report receiving warnings from hospital administrators, legislators and others that they may be targeted for providing necessary abortions," the report said.
The report goes on to quote a provider who recounts a story of a patient who was roughly 14 weeks pregnant and suffering from severe kidney disease.
READ BELOW: Report from the Physicians for Human Rights
"She was getting sicker and sicker," said the provider, who is not named in the report. "(We) had to bring it to the head people of the hospital and be like, 'What are we allowed to do?' And they were like, 'She is not sick enough yet.' And we had to wait for her to get sicker before we were even allowed to offer her termination."
Exceptions are also written into the law for rape, incest and human trafficking up to 15 weeks into a pregnancy, but only if the victim provides legal documentation, like a restraining order or police report.
Florida doctors say they've seen cases in which those exceptions aren't granted.
Dr. Chelsea Daniels, an OB/GYN in Miami, told reporters this week about one of her patients: a 20-year-old rape victim who struggled to file a police report after being turned away by different jurisdictions.
"She now has to leave the state in order to access care, because this exception has failed her, because it is not a real exception," Daniels said.
