From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

The Florida Supreme Court says the shockwave into the 2024 election campaign with a pair of

rulings that will let Governor Rondesantis's six-week abortion

restriction take effect while effectively putting it on the ballot

potentially in November.

Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with the Wall Street Journal.

We are joined today by my colleagues, columnist Kim Strassal,

and editorial board member Kate Batchelder Odell.

The first ruling Monday from the Florida Supreme Court concerned a challenge to a 15-week

abortion restriction that was passed in 2022 but has since been superseded by a six-week

ban and the challengers argued that Florida is not allowed to restrict abortion in this way under a constitutional amendment

called the Privacy Clause that was enacted in 1980. And here's what it says.

Every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into the person's private life except as otherwise provided here in.

And Kim, one thing that is notable about this to me is a pretty good analysis, I think, from the Florida Supreme Court, the challengers to the abortion restriction had argued that in the context of the passage of this privacy amendment, this privacy

clause after Roe v. Wade it was obvious to everybody that abortion was

encompassed by the language there and the majority

goes through that it's a six one majority and says that does not appear to be

the case the people that were originally proposing adding this privacy protection to the Florida

Constitution.

We're talking about things like government data collection in the internet age.

Here's a quote from one commissioner who 10 years ago really understood that personal

and financial data on a substantial part of our population could be collected by government or

...