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The attorney for Florida’s Health Department who sent cease-and-desist letters to TV stations over an abortion-rights ad is contending that he had no part in drafting those letters — and that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ deputies actually wrote them and then directed him to send them under his name.
John Wilson, who until Oct. 10 was the general counsel for the Health Department, said in a sworn affidavit filed Monday that he received the drafts directly from DeSantis’ office and that attorneys for the office “directed me to send them under my name and on the behalf of the Florida Department of Health.”
The ad in question promotes Amendment 4, a ballot initiative in the November election that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. The ad features a woman who says she was diagnosed with brain cancer while pregnant with her second child.
“The doctors knew if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom,” she says. “Florida has now banned abortion even in cases like mine.”
The letters from the Health Department called the ad “false” and “dangerous” and warned the TV stations that they could face criminal prosecution if they continued to air it. Floridians Protecting Freedom, the organizers behind Amendment 4 and the ad, has disputed the claim that the commercial is false, and it called the cease-and-desist letter “a flagrant abuse of power.”
Wilson resigned a week after the letters were issued. In his resignation letter, which was obtained by the Tampa Bay Times, he wrote: “A man is nothing without his conscience. It has become clear in recent days that I cannot join you on the road that lies before the agency.”
Wilson said in his affidavit that he resigned to avoid having to send additional cease-and-desist letters to media outlets.
Wilson said in his affidavit that he resigned to avoid having to send additional cease-and-desist letters to media outlets. The affidavit was entered as part of a federal lawsuit that Floridians Protecting Freedom filed over the DeSantis administration’s efforts against the ad, and it names Wilson and Florida’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Lapado, as defendants.
Last week, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against Lapado, writing: “The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech is ‘false.’ ... To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”
In a statement, the Health Department maintained that the ad is “unequivocally false.”
DeSantis and his fellow Republicans have waged an intense campaign against Amendment 4. The ballot measure would protect abortion access up until fetal viability, essentially undoing the state’s six-week ban. DeSantis has said that the amendment’s passage would represent “the end of the pro-life movement.”