For Florida abortion bill sponsor, it's personal

ORLANDO -- The smiles in the delivery room didn't last long.

Moments after birth, the nurse told Andy and Camille Gardiner the news, and whisked their newborn son to another room for more tests.

``It's like going into something where you just have no clue what you're getting into,'' Andy Gardiner recalled, ``even though you think you know what you're getting into as a parent.'' The worst part, he said, ``is the not knowing.''

Six years later, as a state senator from Orlando, Gardiner is the sponsor of Florida's controversial bill to require doctors to show and describe a sonogram to women before a first-trimester abortion, unless they opt out.

His rationale for the bill strikes a familiar chord: He wants women to make ``an informed decision.''

``All this does,'' Gardiner told colleagues as he introduced the bill in the waning days of the legislative session, ``is say if you want to see the ultrasound, the heartbeat, the opportunity that will come with the birth of that child, you can.''

The ``information,'' supporters openly acknowledge, is intended to induce women to change their minds and reduce the number of abortions performed.

Antiabortion advocates call the bill -- which went to Gov. Charlie Crist on Monday -- ``the most significant pro-life measure that's ever happened in Florida's history.'' Crist has 15 days to decide whether to sign the bill, allow it to become law without his signature or veto it.

For Gardiner, opposition to abortion isn't an exercise in ideology, where the Republicans usually vote one way and the Democrats usually vote the other.

Beneath Gardiner's ideological skin lies a more-powerful motivation for the bill: his son and his experience in the delivery room.

In an instant, his firstborn ceased to be an abstraction and became a living, breathing reality. Mindful of this vivid transition, his hope is that an ultrasound will help make the fetus more tangible to women contemplating abortion.

PERSONAL STORIES

As they debated the measure, lawmakers on both sides of the issue shared intimately personal, sometimes painful, stories.

Gardiner didn't mention his son. He said simply: ``It is something I feel very passionate about.''

Andrew Gardiner Jr., an outgoing 6-year-old who plays tee-ball, wears his dad's old neckties and works the room at political events, has Down syndrome.

The Gardiners didn't know about Andrew's condition before the nurse put him into their arms.

``We had no involvement with Down syndrome prior to that moment,'' said Andy Gardiner in an interview at the family's Orlando home. ``So not knowing anything about it was probably the scarier part.''

``Pretty much everyone we dealt with gave us as much information as possible,'' added Camille Gardiner. ``And sometimes it's overwhelming.''

It is hard to describe what it felt like to hear the news, he said, turning to an analogy from his baseball days: ``It's like looking for the fastball and somebody throws the curveball. You have that immediate shock of you didn't expect the curveball, but you still try to do your best to hit it out of the park.''

State Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, a family friend, was in the hospital that night. ``I remember he and Camille committing themselves to learning everything about the situation,'' he said.

During the pregnancy, the Gardiners never sought a definitive test for genetic disorders because they were worried about the small risk that it might induce a miscarriage. The couple had two before their son's birth.

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