The Florida Senate's leading pro-life advocate, Erin Grall, refiled a controversial bill on Wednesday that would expand the state's wrongful death statute to include fetuses, despite her claim last year that there was still "work to be done" before it could pass.
Only—this bill is identical to last year's, which was killed before its final committee stop over concerns that it defined fetal personhood, a hot-button issue in abortion debates. It was later criticized by then-Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, a Republican, who argued it was "wrong" to include personhood provisions in a liability bill.
But there's a new Senate President this year, Ben Albritton, who voted for Grall's bill in both of its committee stops before Grall withdrew it because "there is still work to be done." Albritton's office hasn’t responded to a request for comment at the time of publishing.
Now the bill is back. And it's unchanged.
SB 1284 expands Florida's Wrongful Death Act to unborn children, which it defines at "any stage of development" in the womb. This means the parents of a fetus negligently or recklessly killed are entitled to civil damages, and the offender would be civilly liable. The bill clarifies that a wrongful death suit in this case cannot be brought against the mother.
Grall, whose office did not respond to a request for comment, explained in committee hearings last year that her bill is necessary to financially alleviate some of the pain faced by parents whose unborn child is wrongfully killed, most commonly in car accidents or in medical negligent cases.
But Democrats worried about the bill's language, claiming that granting unborn children the status of a person with rights constitutes defining fetal personhood, a gateway to more anti-abortion or anti-IVF laws, they argued.
"Everyone should be concerned about fetal personhood because the inevitable consequence of that idea is to strip women of personhood and subjugate them to the State," Anna Hochkammer, the Executive Director of the abortion rights group Florida Women's Freedom Coalition, told The Floridian.
"As for crossing the finish line, anything is possible in Florida these days," she added.
In Alabama, for instance, the state Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that fetuses are considered children in criminal cases involving prenatal exposure to controlled substances, NPR reported. Abortion rights groups blame this decade-old law for the "slow creep" toward the 2024 ruling that frozen embryos are unborn, "extrauterine" children.
To combat the chilling effect on IVF treatments for parents struggling to get pregnant, state lawmakers passed a law granting civil and criminal immunity to IVF clinics.
The backlash surrounding Grall's bill last year was so great that she suddenly withdrew it during its final hearing in the Rules Committee. She released a statement acknowledging that this is the "first time this issue has been considered" by the Legislature and that she "understands there is still work that needs to be done."
Soon after, then-President Passidomo agreed that the measure needed "more work," but criticized adding personhood language into a bill designed to tackle liability issues.
"I think she'll probably come back next year with a better product...where it's not been weaponized by advocates on both sides for something that it is not," she said. "To do a personhood bill or an abortion bill in a liability statute is wrong, and I think we have to sort that out."
Grall carried both Florida's 15-week abortion ban in 2022 and the six-week ban in 2023. Though a hardline Republican, the devout Catholic has a record of voting down bills that promote the death penalty, including Florida's new immigration bill mandating the death penalty for illegal immigrants convicted of capital crimes, a law expanding the death penalty to child rapists, and a law lowering death penalty recommendations from a unanimous jury decision to an 8-4 supermajority.
The session begins March 4.
