Florida’s controversial bill that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy will affect women well beyond the state’s borders.
Patients come to Florida from the Caribbean Islands and Latin America to get abortions, mostly because the procedures are not legal in their countries, women’s health clinics report. In the Caribbean, home to a patchwork of regulatory jurisdictions, Jamaica, the Bahamas and British Virgin Islands consider abortion a felony.
“We get a lot of women from the islands ... this group of women the abortion law affects, it’s not a small percent,” said Joan Weinstein, director of East Cypress Women’s Center in Fort Lauderdale. “They come here because they have family here, they have a place to stay.”
