{"id":45462,"date":"2024-05-14T15:57:34","date_gmt":"2024-05-14T19:57:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=45462"},"modified":"2024-05-14T15:57:40","modified_gmt":"2024-05-14T19:57:40","slug":"lakeland-government-owes-lakeland-women-clear-answers-on-what-6-week-forced-birth-means-for-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/05\/14\/lakeland-government-owes-lakeland-women-clear-answers-on-what-6-week-forced-birth-means-for-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakeland government owes Lakeland women clear answers on what 6-week forced birth means for them"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’m asking city commissioners and LRH for a 6-week forced birth maternity health care summit so that pregnant women can understand what Jennifer Canady has done to them and plan accordingly.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
By BILLY TOWNSEND<\/td><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n
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Back in early 2023, the powers-that-be of Lakeland Regional Health (LRH) regretfully broke terrible news to a Lakealand woman in her 23rd week of pregnancy<\/a>: the hospital would force her to give birth to a fetus that would promptly die because of fatal kidney, lung, and amniotic fluid defects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hospital blamed then Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland for this grotesque cruelty \u2014 specifically Stargel\u2019s 15-week forced birth law that allowed essentially zero exceptions \u2014 not for rape, not or incest, and not for Potter Syndrome, the condition that would kill the fetus in question here upon birth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kelli Stargel, in turn, blamed the hospital for misinterpreting her brutal law. Quote here. Note the bold for later:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[The fetus] has the definition of a fatal fetal abnormality. It is not viable<\/strong><\/em> and therefore she has the right within the law to terminate that pregnancy at any point in the pregnancy that she should decide to do so,\u201d she said. \u201cIf it cannot live outside the womb, it cannot sustain life then it is not viable<\/strong><\/em>. That is the definition of viability<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Thus, the fake pro-life politicians and the highly paid lawyers, doctors, and LRH medicrat administrators all agreed<\/strong><\/em> it was bad<\/strong><\/em> to force this mother to endure extended physical and mental agony for the privilege of painfully birthing a dead-fetus-gestating she would get to watch die. They all agreed it should not happen.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6-week forced birth demands frank public governance \u2014 or endless private martyrs<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Not one individual<\/strong><\/em> among the fake pro-life politicians and highly paid lawyers, doctors, and LRH medicrat adminstrators took a single personal risk to try to avoid this bad thing or had the basic moral courage<\/strong><\/em> to publicly acknowledge a moment of personal responsibility for letting it happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not one of them<\/strong><\/em> sought official public clarity on why this horrible thing that no one wanted to happen had to, in reality, happen \u2014 and whether it must continue to happen to others. It was \u00af\\_(\u30c4)_\/\u00af all the way down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it became public, the so-called best-and-brightest of our community allowed this innocent Potter Syndrome mother to endure their venal \u2014 or worse \u2014 sins for them as they blamed each other and exonerated themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s just the most famous story we know about of the last year, just<\/strong><\/em> here in Lakeland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kelli Stargel was 100 percent wrong<\/strong><\/em>, of course, about her own law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dead-fetus-gestating was<\/strong><\/em> legally \u201cviable\u201d at the moment Stargel\u2019s law imposed forced birth on its mother. A subsequent, publicly unacknowledged change of language in the law proves<\/strong><\/em> that. We\u2019ll come back to it in a moment; but what else would you expect from Polk County\u2019s worst single citizen of the last 20 years?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since that specific incident of 15-week forced birth horror and moral cowardice caused by Kelli Stargel and LRH, Jennifer Canady\u2019s newly enacted 6-week forced birth law has exponentially increased the risk that pregnant women will endure a similar horror \u2014 all for the sake of fake \u201cpro-life\u201d vanity and Ron DeSantis\u2019 pathetic failure of a presidential campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the same powers-that-be who colluded to do nothing<\/strong><\/em> for Potter Syndrome Mom are hiding from that reality, indifferent to the fact that, historically, pregnancy has killed more women than war has men; indifferent to the fact that up to 20 percent of pregnancies experience miscarriage \u2014 and that the treatment for miscarriage is often considered \u201cabortion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Example:<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Another doctor described a situation she has already faced many times with her patients since the abortion ban took effect. The umbilical cord detached from a fetus that was too young to survive. Rather than being allowed medical care to complete the miscarriage, however, the distraught mother was instead forced to read brochures about adoption, fill out paperwork, and wait 14 hours for the heartbeat to stop.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

People who impose that on other people are terrible people. They just expect, casually, women they don\u2019t know or care about<\/strong><\/em> to suffer for their status or warped moral sense of themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I wrote last year about Leo Schofield: Jesus is other people, forced to sacrifice themselves for the sins of others, to save the pride of the prominent or powerful.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPro-life\u201d city commissioners wanted 6-week forced birth; now own it and govern like it.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Well, I\u2019m going to try to do something about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will be appearing before the Lakeland City Commission on May 20 to request\/demand a public summit in which the lawyers, the doctors, the LRH medicrats, and the fake pro-life politicians publicly clarify and take responsibility for the conditions doctors can and will treat \u2014 and those they won\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will ask government to enumerate the services it expects LRH to provide to miscarrying mothers or to those enduring dead-fetuses-gestating \u2014 and those that are prohibited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is what governing<\/strong><\/em> \u2014 rather than cheap \u201cpro-life\u201d sloganeering \u2014 in a 6-week forced birth state and community requires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And right now, all of these people (in government and health care) are ducking their responsibilities completely \u2014 and outsourcing the consequences for their fecklessness on unsuspecting women and the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jennifer Canady is running as fast as she can from the blood and lie-drenched bill<\/a> she sponsored entirely for the laughably doomed DeSantis effort to overthrow Trump. And all the people who skip out on their public duties to attend her fundraisers are covering for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stargel\/Canady laws make maternity care a total black box of scary confusion. Clarify them, providers and politicians.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s look at what\u2019s changed from Kelli Stargel\u2019s 15-week forced birth law to Jennifer Canady\u2019s 6-week forced birth law. Underlines are additions; strikethroughs are deletions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I already addressed the fake exceptions for rape, incest, and human trafficking, which are written to make them incomprehensible and impossible to access. See part 1 of this 2-part series.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

LRH: Which dead-fetus-gestating conditions will you not treat? Which miscarriage treatments can you not provide?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The only significant medical<\/strong><\/em> exception change from 15-week to 6-week forced birth is swapping out the words \u201chas not achieved viability<\/strong><\/em>\u201d for \u201chas not progressed to the third trimester.<\/strong><\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those of you paying close attention will understand that\u2019s an admission LRH was entirely right and Kelli Stargel entirely wrong about the brutal requirements of her law. But don\u2019t take my word for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ask LRH if it would force the pregnant woman suffering with a Potter\u2019s Syndrome fetus to give birth again under the new language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s just one<\/strong><\/em> question among many the City Commission should direct LRH President and CEO Daniel Drummond to answer. A responsible, well-led local government and hospital should be eager<\/strong><\/em> to provide clarifying information to the public when faced with the opaque generality of Jennifer Canady\u2019s 6-week forced birth law. Here\u2019s a start:<\/p>\n\n\n\n