Jason Garcia, a veteran investigative reporter in Florida, reports on the ongoing scandals in the Sunshine State. In this post, he describes a new law that would offer generous bounties to anyone who helped to prevent an abortion arranged in other states. The law hasn’t passed yet, but its purpose is to stop women from accessing abortion drugs via telehealth.

He wrote:

Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature may turn husbands, fathers and brothers into bounty hunters who can block women from ending unwanted pregnancies.

A new bill filed in the Florida House of Representatives would dangle $100,000 prizes in front of private citizens who are willing to sue in order to stop a pregnant family member from obtaining abortion pills through the mail.

More specifically, House Bill 663 would allow a pregnant woman’s spouse, parents or siblings to sue anyone who tries to send her abortion medication — including doctors who prescribe the pills, drug companies that make them, shipping companies that transport them, even friends or other family members who help arrange delivery.

A successful lawsuit would come with a $100,000 payout — plus extra cash to pay lawyers and legal fees.

The Florida legislation is similar to a first-of-its-kind state law that just took effect in Texas. Right-wing groups have billed the Texas measure as a model for other anti-abortion states — like Florida, which bans most after just six weeks of pregnancy — that now want to stop women from accessing abortion services remotely from states where it is still permitted through telehealth and in-home medication.

Many abortion-supportive states around the country have in recent years enacted what are known as“shield laws.” These are laws that protect patients, doctors and others involved in reproductive healthcare from criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits brought under laws passed in anti-abortion states — just like the kind envisioned in House Bill 663. 

But the new Florida bill tries to weaken other states’ shield laws, too.

Shield laws often contain “clawback” provisions that enable someone who provides legal abortion care in their home state — but is then criminally charged or held civilly liable under the laws of another state — to sue in order to recover damages and recoup any costs they incurred in their legal defense.

House Bill 663 would forbid state courts from recognizing or enforcing any judgement issued under another state’s clawback law. What’s more, it would enable someone in Florida who is sued under an out-of-state clawback provision to then countersue in this state. 

House Bill 663 wouldn’t enable a father to sue his daughter or a brother to sue his sister; the legislation specifically prohibits lawsuits against a woman trying to obtain abortion medication for herself.

But women are still the true target here. The ultimate goal of legislation like this is to scare providers out of sending abortion pills to women who want them.

As the executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life — one of the anti-abortion groups that supported the new bounty hunter law in Texas — wrote in a recent column, “The ‘chilling effect’ is precisely the point.”