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Abortion rights advocates want to take their fight back to the Florida Legislature armed with a new talking point: Their cause got about as much support from Florida voters as President-elect Donald Trump did. But the appeal is unlikely to persuade a Republican supermajority whose members were mostly lockstep against Amendment 4. That assessment — disheartening though it may be to advocates — rests firmly on an Election Day conundrum: The same electorate that voted 57% in favor of a ballot initiative to protect abortion access also returned to Tallahassee a Legislature nearly identical to the one that approved the six-week abortion ban the initiative sought to overturn. “Most of the people who got elected voted for the bill that we passed,” said incoming state Senator Randy Fine, R-Palm Bay, who served in the House before winning election to the Senate.

Dear Readers: On Sept. 23, I published two letters from older adults struggling to find a connection (“Still Grieving” and “Wants a Connection”). I asked those of you who have successfully found friendship and romantic partnership at a later stage in life to write in. I shared some of those great responses last Thursday and, as promised, some more today. In 2023, United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, released a Surgeon General Advisory on what he termed “the public health crisis of loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection in our country.” Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, approximately half of U.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My wife and I were attending a college production of “HMS Pinafore.” A student was sitting directly in front of me wearing a white baseball cap. I could tell the hat was going to detract from my pleasure in the show, so I asked the young man, “Would you mind removing your hat?

The 2024 election is over, and the real-life impact of what voters did is far from clear. People across Florida made their choices, as they also did closer to home in Broward and Palm Beach counties. We accept the results, however puzzling some of them were. Before we get to those, this fact is telling: Fewer people voted in 2024 in Florida than four years ago, even though the state is much bigger now than it was then. Unofficially, 10,986,175 people voted in Florida, compared to a total of 11,144,855 four years ago (returns won’t be official for another week or so). This makes no sense.

Now that a proposed amendment to enshrine abortion access in Florida’s constitution has been defeated, hundreds of volunteers and organizers across the state face the difficult question: What’s next? Will Floridians of childbearing age continue to live under a six-week abortion ban indefinitely? Could restrictions on abortion become even tighter in the state? In the days after the amendment’s defeat, reproductive rights advocates considered next steps.