Catholics for Choice Airs Pro-Amendment 4 Ads on Spanish-Language Radio

With just weeks remaining until a hotly contested November election, a Washington, D.C.-based pro-choice Catholic advocacy group has placed new advertisements on Spanish-language radio stations in Florida urging Hispanic voters to support Amendment 4, which would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. 

Catholics for Choice spent $26,000 to feature the advertisements on Actualidad Radio in Miami and iHeart Radio affiliates in Orlando. The advertisements star Dr. Cecilia Grande, a South Miami gynecologist and a devout Catholic who supports Amendment 4.

In the ad, Grande says Florida's current six-week abortion ban conflicts with medical ethics and conscience.

"While this law claims to have exceptions, in practice, legal and administrative obstacles make it almost impossible for women to get the medical care they need," she says. "My patients' pregnancies are wanted and welcomed, but not all pregnancies are without complications. In these months, we have seen patients suffering from miscarriages or with very severe complications. Under current law, they cannot be cared for and are forced to go home. Only to return to the hospital with hemorrhages and infections, on the verge of death, and we care for them, praying that it is not too late.

"My faith and my medical oath call me to protect the lives of my patients. Many of them are mothers, wives, our sisters, and our daughters. For them, I urge you to vote yes on Amendment 4.”

In a press release, Stephanie Hanson-Quintana, Catholics for Choice's director of organizing and movement building, said, "In an election where the [Florida Conference of] Catholic Bishops are doing everything they can to interfere with this election and our reproductive healthcare decisions, Florida’s pro-choice Catholics deserve to have their voices heard. The truth is only one in ten Catholics agree with the Bishops' position on abortion, and one in four women who have abortions are Catholic themselves. We want pro-choice Catholics to know they’re not alone in voting their conscience in support of reproductive freedom, no matter how much the hierarchy spends or says."

Amendment 4, otherwise known as the "Right to Abortion Initiative," requires a 60 percent majority to pass. The ballot initiative reads, "No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient's health, as determined by the patient's healthcare provider."

Fetal viability is estimated around 24 weeks of pregnancy, the same threshold recognized under Roe v. Wade.