Florida: More babies mean more money

The abortion controversy reached a meeting of an otherwise obscure state panel on Monday and developed in part into a discussion about how much money or savings Florida taxpayers would save by having or aborting their children.

And the presence of a senior adviser to Governor Ron DeSantis signaled that the administration is firmly opposed to Amendment 4, a bill passed in November to ensure access to abortion in the state.

Chris Spencer, DeSantis's former budget chief and now chairman of the state Board of Administration, told other panelists at the state's Financial Impact Estimating Conference that the abortion amendment would have a negative financial impact on Florida. The group met in the Knott Building, part of the Florida Capitol Complex.

A “financial impact statement” to be printed on ballots could potentially persuade voters to keep Florida’s Heartbeat Protection Act, a ban on abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy, in force.

Spencer, who does not normally attend conference sessions, said a decline in births would be detrimental to government revenue in the long term due to lower population growth.

“If a single life cost more than it brought in, you would see at least a slowdown in revenue growth,” Spencer said, arguing that revenues have increased as the state's population has increased.

Amendment 4, which needs at least 60% of the vote to pass, would repeal the current restrictions that DeSantis has put in place. The ballot proposal would allow abortions until the fetus is viable, usually around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

This would restore a standard that applied across the country until the U.S. Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion with the Dobbs decision in 2022.

Recent data show that people continue to have abortions even after state abortion bans are passed, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research organization that advocates for abortion rights. Data from 2023 for the year following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization show that the number of abortions in the U.S. actually increased by 11% compared to 2020.

Amy Baker, coordinator of the Florida Legislature's Office of Economic and Demographic Research, said growth depends on which demographic group is gaining ground. It makes a difference whether baby boomers are moving to South Florida or a newborn is moving there.

“A purely financial discussion,” says the state economist

However, she reminded the public: “This is a purely financial discussion. No one at this table is saying that life in itself is valuable or not. We are only referring to services to the state or revenue to the state.”

Spencer ultimately said the financial impact should be considered “undetermined” in the vote, but also argued, for example, that a possible legal battle over the change in the law would cost the state money.

The EDR’s assessment of this proposed vote was also “undetermined”, as analysts typically do not take legal disputes into account when calculating the fiscal impact.

But Spencer and opponents of Amendment 4 who spoke at the meeting, including a representative of the Attorney General's Office, argued that legal costs could run into the millions over decades.

Jason Gonzalez, a prominent partner at the Tallahassee law firm Lawson Huck Gonzalez, speaking on behalf of the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America group, said the total cost of outside counsel over a 20 or even 30-year period could be $3 million to $5 million.

“Much more litigation than amendment to medical marijuana,” says lawyer

“I can say from experience that this amendment, if passed, will generate a lot more litigation than the medical marijuana amendment,” Gonzalez said. “It will probably happen 10 times as often.”

There was no spokesperson advocating for the amendment other than the ACLU, which represented the amendment's sponsors. Michelle Marra Morton said there would be no financial impact if the ballot bill passed and that future litigation would not be allowed when considering the financial impact statement.

This is the second time that EDR has had to prepare a statement on the financial implications of Amendment 4.

The statement was originally finalized last year and must now take into account the state's new six-week ban after abortion rights advocates argued and won in court that stricter abortion restrictions would cost the state more money. The original statement on the financial impact was “indefinite.”

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Anna Harden

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