Forced birth is local, part 2: Lakeland government owes Lakeland women clear answers on what 6-week forced birth means for them

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.

Here is Part 1:

Forced birth is local, pt. 1: what is the rape exception protocol, Sheriff Judd?

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Here is Part 2:

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: the hospital would force her to give birth to a fetus that would promptly die because of fatal kidney, lung, and amniotic fluid defects.

The hospital blamed then Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland for this grotesque cruelty — specifically Stargel’s 15-week forced birth law that allowed essentially zero exceptions — not for rape, not for incest, and not for Potter Syndrome, the condition that would kill the fetus in question here upon birth.

Kelli Stargel, in turn, blamed the hospital for misinterpreting her brutal law. Quote here. Note the bold for later:

[The fetus] has the definition of a fatal fetal abnormality. It is not viable 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,” she said. “If it cannot live outside the womb, it cannot sustain life then it is not viable. That is the definition of viability.

Thus, the fake pro-life politicians and the highly paid lawyers, doctors, and LRH medicrat administrators all agreed it was bad 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.

And yet …

6-week forced birth demands frank public governance — or endless private martyrs

Not one individual 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 to publicly acknowledge a moment of personal responsibility for letting it happen.

Not one of them sought official public clarity on why this horrible thing that no one wanted to happen had to, in reality, happen — and whether it must continue to happen to others. It was ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ all the way down.

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

And that’s just the most famous story we know about of the last year, just here in Lakeland.

Kelli Stargel was 100 percent wrong, of course, about her own law.

The dead-fetus-gestating was legally “viable” at the moment Stargel’s law imposed forced birth on its mother. A subsequent, publicly unacknowledged change of language in the law proves that. We’ll come back to it in a moment.

Since that specific incident of 15-week forced birth horror and moral cowardice caused by Kelli Stargel and LRH, Jennifer Canady’s newly enacted 6-week forced birth law has exponentially increased the risk that pregnant women will endure a similar horror — all for the sake of fake “pro-life” vanity and Ron DeSantis’ pathetic failure of a presidential campaign.

All the same powers-that-be who colluded to do nothing 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 — and that the treatment for miscarriage is often considered “abortion.”

Example:

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.

People who impose that on other people are, well, you decide. But to just expect, casually, women they don’t know or care about to suffer for their status or warped moral sense of themselves is … something.

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.

“Pro-life” city commissioners wanted 6-week forced birth; now own it and govern like it.

Well, I’m going to try to do something about that.

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 — and those they won’t.

I will ask government to enumerate the services it expects LRH to provide to miscarrying mothers or to those enduring dead-fetuses-gestating — and those that are prohibited.

This is what governing — rather than cheap “pro-life” sloganeering — in a 6-week forced birth state and community requires.

And right now, all of these people (in government and health care) are ducking their responsibilities completely — and outsourcing the consequences for their fecklessness on unsuspecting women and the public.

Jennifer Canady is running as fast as she can from the blood and lie-drenched bill 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.

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

Let’s look at what’s changed from Kelli Stargel’s 15-week forced birth law to Jennifer Canady’s 6-week forced birth law. Underlines are additions; strikethroughs are deletions.

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.

LRH: Which dead-fetus-gestating conditions will you not treat? Which miscarriage treatments can you not provide?

The only significant medical exception change from 15-week to 6-week forced birth is swapping out the words “has not achieved viability” for “has not progressed to the third trimester.”

Those of you paying close attention will understand that’s an admission LRH was entirely right and Kelli Stargel entirely wrong about the brutal requirements of her law. But don’t take my word for it.

Ask LRH if it would force the pregnant woman suffering with a Potter’s Syndrome fetus to give birth again under the new language.

That’s just one 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 to provide clarifying information to the public when faced with the opaque generality of Jennifer Canady’s 6-week forced birth law. Here’s a start:

• Release publicly how LRH lawyers define “reasonable medical judgement” and “major bodily function.” Release all internal deliberations about what Canady’s law requires and forbids.

• Provide a precise, public list of “fatal fetal abnormalities” eligible for pregnancy termination up to the 3rd trimester.

• Are doctors required to wait 24 hours to perform an emergency pregnancy termination, as the law seems to require?

• Quantify how much threat must a woman must face for a pregnancy termination to be legal under the “save the pregnant woman’s life” exception. Is there a percentage — 100 percent certain to die? 85 percent? 35 percent?

• Publicly release the process two doctors have to use to certify the legal need for pregnancy termination. Release any standard form they must fill out.

• Explain how the two doctors are chosen to act as judge and jury on pregnancy termination. Are they required to consult with LRH lawyers or administrators? What if LRH doctors and lawyers disagree? Who wins?

• List precisely which miscarriage treatments are illegal. List precisely which were legal under 15-week forced birth that became illegal with Jennifer Canady’s 6-week forced birth law taking effect.

• Share and publish anything else that helps a woman prepare and plan for her pregnancy at LRH.

It is 100 percent true that Danielle Drummond can — and likely will — tell the Lakeland City Commission pound sand and deny all these requests. But she’s paid a lot of money — much of it tax money, indirectly.

So make her say no in public.

The forced birth referendum does not absolve you from the obligation to govern now, Mr. Mayor

I consider Lakeland Mayor Bill Mutz a personal friend. But I didn’t address him as a personal friend when I sent a note to city commissioners explaining my request. I addressed him as Lakeland mayor — the formal, elected public leadership position that he sought and holds.

Bill Mutz is the former 2-year chairman of the LRH board, having served on the board for an additional decade. Bill Mutz is also a long-time “pro-life” political activist. He’s one of the most prominent, public “pro-life” politicians in Polk County.

Bill Mutz — politician, hospital board chair, and activist — very much wanted the forced birth reality now imposed on everyone else in Lakeland and Florida. And that context should inform how you read the response to me he sent on behalf of the city commission and city manager when I asked for a spot on the agenda.

Mr. Townsend,

I would like to clarify that Requests to Appear are solely at the discretion of the City Manager and must adhere to the established criterion. The Commission does not influence this process. However, we do value audience input, which can be provided within a monitored 5-minute time slot per speaker at the end of the meeting on any topic.

As you know, the 6-week abortion legislation is not within the legislative jurisdiction of the Commission and is a state policy that will be enforced accordingly locally.

Furthermore, LRH manages its compliance with state law which will be handled accordingly.  If LRH wishes to provide maternal healthcare forums, it will be within its operational discretion to do so.

Citizens will have a referendum opportunity on this legislation in November, which is the procedurally most effective way to address any future legal changes. In the meantime, this is a matter for statewide coordination.

Respectfully,

Bill Mutz

Mayor

That is a weak and morally empty answer. It’s the voice of a politician completely unprepared to get what he said he always wanted.

And the referendum probably won’t save you from governing your beliefs, Mr. Mayor.

60 percent is a very high political threshold. Lying forced birthers will use stories like the woman’s at the start of this article to say, “Those babykillers want to be able to murder babies right up until birth blah blah blah,” when, in fact, the referendum is the only sure way to protect Florida women like the Potter’s Syndrome mother from the gnarly fingers of mindless government.

I suspect the referendum will get partisanized enough in the wash of the presidential election to stay under 60 percent — I’m predicting 58.3 percent, or something like that.

And then, Mr. Mayor, you’re going to have to govern in full ownership of beliefs most of your fellow citizens reject, which you did not build a political or social case for, which was lied into existence by Jennifer Canady, and which no fake “pro-lifer” gave any thought to operationalizing. You’re going to have to recruit doctors, who are already starting to shun brutal forced birth states like Florida.

And that goes for every so-called “pro-lifer,” not just Bill Mutz.

Own your beliefs. Govern them publicly. Or roll them back. No one would have ever need to beg me to take my own beliefs seriously as a governing official.

Stop outsourcing every brutal consequence to people you don’t bother to know and can bury under fake “privacy” laws because you liked imagining you were the good guys with no justification.

I didn’t want this world. You did. It’s yours to govern. And I certainly won’t let up on trying to force you to govern it.

Did Kelli Stargel apologize to her victim or LRH?

On its face, the change from “viability” to the “the third trimester” seems to extend the “fatal fetal abnormality” exception to 27 or 28 weeks.

Timing-wise, on its face, that would seem to allow the Potter Syndrome mother at the beginning of this article to receive appropriate care for her suffering if it happened again. Now remember what Stargel said in blaming LRH for her mindless cruelty:

[The fetus] has the definition of a fatal fetal abnormality. It is not viable 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,” she said. “If it cannot live outside the womb, it cannot sustain life then it is not viable. That is the definition of viability.

Jennifer Canady’s 6-week version of Kelli’s 15-week forced birth law struck the word “viability” entirely. Clearly, Kelli Stargel has no idea what viability means or meant. I’m not sure I do either, really, in this context.

“Third trimester” is much clearer. However, it also says clearly, if you don’t catch the fatal fetal anomaly before 27 weeks, you’re birthing that dead-fetus-gestating. Moreover, it’s not at all clear that Potter Syndrome, which killed the fetus in question shortly after birth, qualifies legally as a fatal fetal abnormality. That’s why we need a hard, clear list.

In any event, I would bet a lot of money this high-profile Lakeland case was directly responsible for that wording change. Here’s how I think that viability-to-third trimester change went down.

I suspect the LRH lawyers and Danielle Drummond, on the downlow, talked to Jennifer Canady or somebody more important about it. I bet it went something like this:

Hey Jennifer and Kelli. Look this was bad press for everybody. It makes us all look incompetent, impotent, self-absorbed, and brutal. Let’s change it. We won’t blame you; you don’t blame us. Don’t tell the Potter’s Syndrome mother. She’s already too public about it and doesn’t understand she’s supposed to suffer quietly — that our embarrassment is far more important than her agony. After all, we’re all in the same club. She’s not.

Feel free to tell me I’m wrong in public.

At the very least, we know that Kelli Stargel made a big public statement blaming medical providers and bleating on about “viability” just weeks before Jennifer Canady’s law erased “viability” as a thing.

And rather than acknowledge that change or publicly apologize to the Potter Syndrome mother and the public, Kelli Stargel just quietly went back to her 6-figure fake job with Lakeland’s fake STEM university that just hired a community college president to get him out of the way for somebody else.

And the Leadership Class of Lakeland and Polk County couldn’t care less about any of it.

Suffering and consequences and accountability are always for other people

That’s why I don’t expect anyone on the city commission to act with any more courage than Stargel or Canady on my entirely reasonable public health request. They all publicly support Canady and Stargel as candidates and “leaders” in good standing with the club, after all.

They’re part of the same club that taught Justin Sharpless to skip out on his elected job so he could be seen panting like an obedient, eager puppy at a fundraiser. The culture of ducking your job if it’s at all hard or inconvenient is deeply embedded in Polk/Lakeland public life.

So I suspect the commissioners will just silently sit there, waiting for me to be done with half smiles. No one will act as if 6-week forced birth really is the law, which government has an obligation to impose with an iota of clarity or compassion or public professionalism.

And I don’t expect anyone else in government or health care leadership to take any responsibility for a brutal law very few of them actually even support in private — their fake “pro-life” public platitudes aside. They’re completely content to keep outsourcing the unpleasantness to the Potter Syndrome mothers.

But they won’t be able to say no one asked them publicly to do their jobs and govern as if 6-week forced birth is the law.

I am going to ask them to.

That’s what I can do as a public citizen — and all I can control. If you’d like to join me, I’d welcome the company. The meeting starts at 9 a.m. But I’m also perfectly content to do it alone.