Florida Bill Allowing Fetal Wrongful Death Suits Narrowly Advances Amid Bipartisan Backlash

TALLAHASSEE—A Republican-led bill allowing Florida parents to collect damages if their fetus is killed faced bipartisan backlash during its first hearing on Tuesday, narrowly passing amid concerns of abortion restrictions and trivial lawsuits.

SB 1284 by Sen. Erin Grall, the state Legislature’s leading pro-life advocate, expands Florida’s Wrongful Death Act to “unborn children,” which it defines as people at any stage of development. 

This bill, which died last year amid concerns of fetal personhood, comes months after millions of Floridians tried and failed to overturn the state’s six-week abortion ban through a constitutional amendment. And though the measure deals with fetuses, Grall pushed back on critics and insisted it is “not an abortion bill.”

“It is when there is negligence that happens, that but for that negligence, that child would be here,” Grall said in the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday afternoon. “Regardless of what that child’s life looks like, it has a value.”

Grall was the 2023 sponsor of Florida’s contentious six-week abortion ban, which a group of pro-choice activists attempted to repeal with a proposed amendment that would have guaranteed abortion until viability in the state constitution. It failed with 57% of the vote.

SB 1284, meanwhile, would guarantee compensation to the parents of a fetus accidentally, recklessly, or willfully killed by another. It specifies that neither a healthcare provider who was following lawful procedure nor the mother of the fetus can be sued under the bill.

But Republican Sen. Tom Leek worried about this language, specifically targeting an amendment Grall made to the bill on Tuesday. She reworded the prohibition on actions being brought against the mother, changing “a wrongful death action may not be brought” to “this act does not authorize" an action.

Leek feared that this edit could be “weaponized” against a woman who loses a child by leaving the door open for an estranged father to sue a woman by using other laws. He became the sole Republican to join Democrats in voting “no.”

But he wasn’t the only conservative to have concerns.

Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, the former Senate President who called enshrining fetal personhood in a liability statute “wrong” last year, questioned the bill’s provision for determining damages based in part on the future earnings a fetus would have made if it survived.

“An unborn child could be a child that’s a week old in the womb [under this bill],” Passidomo began. “We don’t know if that child is gonna live, we don’t know if that child is gonna be Elon Musk…or somebody with all kinds of disabilities.

“To put dollar figures on something so speculative…this is creating a huge tort,” she added, before noting that because she will see the bill in its next committee, and because she “respects” Grall, she would vote for it—for now.

The Democrats agreed, adding fears that this could be laying the groundwork for more stringent abortion bans.

“The economic damages are so speculative…a six-month-old fetus could claim to be a future lawyer,” said Sen. Tina Polsky. “This is setting a new base for future issues, for future liability, for future bans.”

Florida is just one of six states to not allow wrongful death suits for fetuses, though it does provide criminal pathways involving the death of a fetus. Grall, in her close on the bill, noted that Florida law does not go far enough.

“We should have parity in the way that we treat a child inside the womb and outside the womb,” she said. 

The measure passed in a 6 to 4 vote. It will head to the Appropriations Committee on Criminal and Civil Justice.