The “Ride to Decide” Bus parked outside the Cuban Club in Tampa on Aug. 1, 2024. (Photo by Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix)
The national abortion rights advocacy group Free & Just brought its “Ride to Decide” bus tour to the Sunshine State this week, making appearances in Miami, Orlando, and Tampa.
The bus tour kicked off in Milwaukee during the Republican National Convention last month and is hitting states up and down the East Coast and South for the next few weeks before concluding at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later in August.
“We’re doing events across the country, both community roundtables and press conferences,” said Veronica Ingham, senior campaign director for Free and Just, a national nonprofit organization focused on federal protections for abortion and expanding reproductive rights. “We really want to feature local community members who are talking about the impact of abortion bans across the country.”
The tour has already gone through Texas and Louisiana, whose legislatures have enacted total abortion bans. They are scheduled to later go to Georgia (which has a six-week ban), North Carolina (which bans abortions after 12 weeks’ gestation), Pennsylvania (24 weeks), Ohio (20 weeks) and ends in Illinois (where abortion is legal until the point of viability).