Speaking at a meeting of Women for Responsible Legislation at Pensacola City Hall on Thursday, Florida Rep. Mike Hill announced that God had instructed him to sponsor a bill next year to ban nearly all abortions, similar to a controversial bill passed in Alabama earlier this month, reports the Pensacola News Journal.
Hill sponsored a failed bill in the Florida Legislature earlier this year that would have banned abortions if a fetal heartbeat was detected. That bill included exceptions for rape, incest, domestic violence, human trafficking or if the woman’s life is in danger.
According to the Journal, Hill said he wasn’t happy with the exceptions in the bill, but thought it would make it more palatable and give it a better chance of passing.
The lawmaker then told the group that God had spoken to him at an anti-abortion rally a few weeks ago in Pensacola while the keynote speaker was delivering a speech.
“I’m going to say this, even though I know the press is here,” said Hill.
“As plain as day, God spoke to me,” he continued. “He said that wasn’t my bill, talking about the heartbeat detection bill that I filed. He said that wasn’t my bill. I knew immediately what he was talking about. He said, you remove those exceptions and you file it again. And I said yes Lord, I will. It’s coming back. It’s coming back. We are going to file that bill without any exceptions just like what we saw passed in Alabama.”
The group in the room applauded and cheered Hill’s remarks.
Hill said he was confident his bill would have passed if it had been given a hearing during the recent legislative session. He said he had 21 confirmed yes votes in the 40-member Florida Senate.
“The priorities were health care, transportation and the Everglades,” Hill said. “All of that, you know, which are important, but life is of preeminence import. Without life, you won’t even have a need for all this other stuff.”
“Another reason I heard, was that we only needed to file one pro-life bill per session and it should be run by a female,” Hill said.
Hill said he disagreed with that argument and questioned why the bill needed to be sponsored by a woman.
“They said, ‘Well it seems to be accepted more, particularly during debate when a woman is presenting it,’” Hill said. “I said, wait a minute, a hundred percent of all pregnancies are caused by a man, so why can’t a man be involved in this? And that child that is there, 50% chance it’s going to be a man. Why can’t a man present this? That doesn’t hold any water with me at all.”
