Campbell, Julien buck Democratic party line during House passage of abortion-restricting bills

Today, six abortion-restricting bills passed during their final vote on the Florida House floor. Even though each of the bills was sponsored by House Republicans (and Democrats had little input on final versions of the bill), some House Democrats broke party lines to speak during a debate in support of some of the legislation.

State Reps. Daphne Campbell, D-Miami Shores, and John Julien, D-North Miami Beach, both spoke on the floor in support of bills that would limit access to abortion services in the state of Florida.

Campbell expressed her support for a state amendment that would prohibit the use of public dollars for abortion. In an impassioned speech, she claimed that the real issue at hand was religion.

“This is about following Bible principles,” she said.

Rep. Jim Waldman, D-Coconut Creek, later pointed out that he finds the House invoking the Bible during legislative decisions “offensive.”

Rep. Julien, meanwhile, invoked the “Black Genocide” movement during his support for the “Parental Notice for Abortion” bill. It’s a movement that has been known for extreme rhetoric and is growing in influence. Anti-abortion messaging on billboards aimed at the black community has been seen all over the country — including in Florida. Groups as influential as the Family Research Council have recently touted the movement’s message.

“I know about the Maafa,” Julien said. “I know about eugenics.”

Maafa is also known as the “African Holocaust.” According to an African Holocaust awareness group’s website, the term is “derived from a (Kiswahili) word meaning disaster, terrible occurrence or great tragedy. The term today collectively refers to the Pan-African study of the 500 hundred years of suffering of people of African heritage.”

There is a recent movement called Maafa 21 that links abortion rates in the African-American community to a concerted effort among abortion providers to target members as part of a “Black Genocide.”

This rhetoric — although extreme — has been even heard from a potential presidential candidate already. Georgia’s Herman Cain said during a talk at the Heritage Foundation that Planned Parenthood is “planned genocide.”

“When Margaret Sanger — check my history — started Planned Parenthood,” he said, “the objective was to put these centers in primarily black communities so they could help kill black babies before they came into the world.”

PolitiFact vetted his history and granted this movement’s claims the highest level of falsehood.

Rep. Julien said that the legislature must acknowledge that “abortion is a genocide of the unborn.”