PALM BEACH GARDENS | After the pro-abortion Amendment 4 failed to garner at least 60 percent of yes votes from Florida voters in November 2024, there might be a tendency for pro-lifers to sit back, congratulate themselves and become complacent. But the message from Sara Johnson, who helped lead the Vote No on 4 campaign, is “We won the war. Let’s win the peace.”
“Right now, it’s peace time. Right now is the time that we go make our neighbor more pro-life, not just supportive of the heartbeat bill,” she said. “Let’s win more people to our side. And right now, life is not a political subject. You’re not asking them to vote no on an amendment along with all the politicians that they just made decisions about. You’re asking them to be more pro-life.”
Johnson, statewide director of Florida Voters Against Extremism, formerly known as Vote No on 4, returned to the Cathedral of St. Ignatius Loyola Sept. 17, 2025, to speak about extreme pro-abortion amendments that have been on ballots across the country in the three years since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Current opinion polls show that about 63 percent of Floridians, if they’re asked out of the blue, believe that abortion should be legal, she said. But another poll found that if a voter is informed about the state’s current abortion regulations, he or she will usually agree with them.
“Florida’s Heartbeat Protection Act limits abortion beyond six weeks’ gestation,” Johnson said. “It protects life once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is about six weeks, and there are six exceptions to this: rape, incest and human trafficking. If that’s your scenario, you can have an abortion up to 15 weeks. Fatal fetal abnormalities allow you to have an abortion through the first two trimesters, and then life and health of the mother allows abortion throughout an entire pregnancy at the discretion of two physicians.”
When Floridians are informed about the current law, she said, “six out of 10 of them say that that’s a reasonable restriction on abortion.” So, a top priority of pro-life Floridians is to educate people about the law already on the books. Secondly, the goal is to ensure that more people answer yes when asked if they are pro-life.
“Those are two opportunities for us because we can’t make Florida’s laws more pro-life. We can’t limit abortion more until we convince more people to be pro-life,” Johnson said. “So, we have to get them to the six-week mark, and then we have to get them to be more pro-life. But those are both things that we can be working on right now.”
Shifting her focus, Johnson warned that, because of the state’s six-week limit on abortions, the abortion lobby will likely challenge Florida with future ballot initiatives. After the U.S. Supreme Court handed authority to regulate abortion back to the states, some governors signed legislation to remove abortion limits. But in states with established pro-life laws, such as Florida, abortion lobbyists have put constitutional amendments on state ballots. Of the 10 states with a pro-abortion measure on the ballot in 2024, only three rejected the proposal.
“Putting initiatives on the ballot is something that’s unique to only about half of states in the U.S., and in the Southeast, Florida and Arkansas are the only two that allow ballot initiatives,” Johnson said. “So, that’s one of the things that makes us subject to future attack from the abortion lobby because we have a law that protects life, and we have a process to change that through the ballot.”
She is “fairly confident” there will not be a new ballot question during the midterm campaign of 2026. It’s more likely that the abortion lobby will set its sights on 2028, when more voters will head to the polls for the presidential election.
Another factor that Johnson brought up is that, among the 10 ballot initiatives in 2024, the abortion lobby spent nearly half ($120 million) of its money ($253 million) in the Florida campaign. The state has a big target on its back, she said.
Johnson urged those in attendance to build a culture of life and help their neighbors see the wisdom of rejecting abortion. Enlist friends in a diaper drive or ask them to volunteer at a pregnancy resource center to see beyond the politics of the abortion issue.
“Now is an opportunity for us to engage the hearts and the minds of our friends and neighbors and make sure not just that they understand what our laws are, but what we need to do in order to be a culture of life, a culture that affirms life,” she said.
For more information on local pro-life activities, visit https://www.ccdpb.org/programs/respect-life/ or contact Deanna Herbst-Hoosac, director of Catholic Charities’ Respect Life ministry in the Diocese of Palm Beach, at dherbst@ccdpb.org or 561-360-3330.
