Tilting at Windmills

This week, commissioners and activists on both sides of the issue continued to squabble over essentially banning non-existent abortion clinics. Meanwhile, dead fish continued to foul our beaches, undoubtedly one of the many consequences of the latest ecological disaster at Piney Point, and plans continue to move forward on more unsustainable growth in an area without the infrastructure to accommodate it. It was emblematic of what public policy has become at every level today. Here’s something shiny to distract you over here, so that you don’t look at what’s really happening over there.

When it comes to women’s reproductive rights, I have a pretty simple position. I believe that bearing a child should be solely the decision of the woman carrying it. Period. Like anyone else, I suppose, my position is informed by my experiences. The earliest of those was the knowledge that a family member had died while undergoing a so-called "back-alley abortion“ at a time before Roe v. Wade made the procedure safe and legal in my home state. It soon became clear to me that, in reality, outlawing abortion has never, ever eliminated the procedure but only restricted its safe implementation to those with the financial resources to fly off to wherever it can be done quietly.

When I was in college, a girl I was dating became pregnant and decided immediately to have the pregnancy aborted. She had a very bright future in front of her, it ultimately came to fruition and, by all accounts, she’s happily married, with a great career and beautiful family–an ending that, both statistically and by my own intuition, would have been far less likely, had she not made that difficult decision. In terms of trauma, she experienced plenty, but not from the procedure so much as the abhorrent behavior of right-to-life activists who lined the exit of the clinic to block our vehicle and attempt to force her to look at the pictures of dissimilar abortion procedures they felt the need to slap against our windows.

I had hoped I would never have to watch someone go through something like that again, eventually married and had a child of my own. However, nearly two decades later, after a divorce, a woman I was dating became pregnant and instantly made the same decision. I felt ashamed for being a part of another person’s personal trauma and immediately scheduled a vasectomy procedure for myself, the only real form of male contraceptive that is available. My only regret is that I didn’t get the vasectomy before that and genuinely believe that all males who do not want children or are unwilling to fully participate in raising a child should have one. It is, without question, the greatest impact our gender can have in terms of if not ending abortions, at least making the procedure "safe, legal, and rare.“

I respect the fact that people have differing opinions, informed by different values and experiences (a friend whose biological mother gave him up for adoption comes to mind), but still feel that the only equitable solution is to allow the woman to make the choice for herself. I also feel that, rather than attempt to manipulate our current law of the land established in Roe v. Wade by way of imposing all kinds of disingenuous restrictions to the procedure, the best way for right-to-life activists to actually reduce abortion procedures is to approach the issue from more pragmatic angles.

Working to end the stigma associated with a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and then giving the child up for adoption and fighting for stronger guaranteed rights in the workplace for women who have to pause their careers to have children would certainly do more than supporting politicians seeking to side door the law and certainly more than traumatizing women who choose to have the procedure. I find that last element particularly hypocritical, given that so many of them cite post-abortion trauma as a reason to outlaw the procedure.

Sex education beyond the completely ineffective idea of abstinence would also help, but right-to-life advocates are very often opposed to such education. Increasing access to female birth control would also have a significant impact but, as we saw with the Affordable Care Act, that dog don't hunt for that crowd, either (the idea that you can be anti-abortion and anti-birth control might be the most contradictory one in all of this). While we're at it, we could offer publicly sponsored vasectomy education and free procedures for all males who do not want to father children or are not willing and/or able to support them, which would surely reduce abortions considerably.

Currently, our nation is poised to relitigate this third rail of politics, but not because of a deep motivation to protect the unborn. Sure, there are activists who truly believe they are saving lives by manipulating policy and religious zealots who have a Sodom and Gomorrah view of allowing others to sin and answer to their God for it on judgment day, but culture wars are rarely more than red meat for the masses. When they are not being waged to raise money to keep the political machine well-oiled, you can bet they are being used as weapons of mass distraction. The real problem with such politics comes when the red meat you’re throwing to your side involves taking away the essential rights of others.

Commissioners James Satcher and Kevin Van Ostenbridge, the two most vocal supporters of the ordinance proposed by Satcher, have on several occasions brought race into the issue. They’ve each brought up the sordid history of eugenicist Margaret Sanger, who led an umbrella organization that would eventually morph into Planned Parenthood (which has publicly denounced Sanger). They point to the fact that Planned Parenthood tends to open women’s health clinics disproportionately in minority neighborhoods. Other conservative white males in the Prager U crowd have dubbed this "the new black genocide.“

In reality, Planned Parenthood provides a myriad of women’s health services, including diagnostic procedures like pap smears and mammograms. Abortions comprise but a small fraction of the procedures they perform. Their locations target low-income neighborhoods that are underserved in terms of sliding-scale health clinics. Yes, given the unfortunate socio-economic realities of our country, that still too often means communities with high concentrations of people of color, which is, again, a better place to target public policy if it really is about holding all human life sacred.

That same demographic, however, is also at much greater risk for things like cervical and breast cancer, so, thank goodness for all of those diagnostic tests that Planned Parenthood is providing underserved Black and Brown communities. Again, that is, if indeed such things are important to the all-life-is-sacred crowd. However, that whole mantra gets complicated, as well. I mean, it’s not like they or their party have supported universal healthcare or a repeal of the death penalty, especially given the racially disparate way the latter has historically been implemented.

They might also wish to know that there is no greater indicator of generational poverty than a single woman under 18 having a child, which, again, is experienced much more often in poor, minority communities where the resources to have it safely and quietly dealt withthe way it is routinely done in wealthier ones do not tend to exist.

Of course, once you get into such details, conservatives start throwing around terms like "personal responsibility" because they oppose the sort of safety net programs that actually help people in such circumstances care for the children they are so insistent that they have. The old joke of How do you get a conservative to care about poor children? Shove them back into the womb lands, like all jokes that hit their mark, because there is more than a kernel of truth in it.

And while we’re on the subject of racism, I hope that commissioners Satcher and Van Ostenbridge will show every bit as much concern over racist origins when the issue of the confederate monument is revisited and take a good hard look at the racial attitudes of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and their outspoken love of the Klu Klux Klan while they were donating all of those monuments–including the one in Manatee County's possession–at the height of Jim Crow and Confederate revisionism. It should be noted, however, that both commissioners were strong supporters of restoring the monument while running for their seats last summer.

Never mind the fact that there is an enormous amount of resistance to Satcher’s proposal among the residents of our county. Satcher and Van Ostenbridge have routinely cited their victories as a license to do whatever they and their benefactors cook up. After all, voters clearly bought into their conservative agenda in electing them. In truth, of course, both men hold their office primarily because a developer poured buckets of money into spurious attack ads against their much more qualified Republican opponents, Priscilla Trace and Matt Bower, respectively. And it was done by conflating hot button national political issues with local politics so that voters wouldn’t be focused on issues that actually do affect them here, like the unsustainable development both commissioners recently fell over themselves to advance.

When a constituent emailed Satcher, whose district the would-be mega-development resides within, to express their disappointment in his failing to give voice to the large body of his constituents who told him they opposed it, Satcher suggested that if they weren’t with him on issues like the abortion ordinance, they shouldn’t count on him being with them on matters that are important to them.

"Also, many other names that I see as on your side are very quick to attack me, agree with accusations of impropriety against me, and attack every position I hold dear,“ wrote Satcher. "Then those same people call or write me and ask for me to vote their way. If people want to attack me for trying to protect babies along with gopher tortoises and then expect me to listen to their every policy whim, it’s just not going to happen.“

Satcher also said in the same email that "to his knowledge“ the Lindsay family, who owns the land on which the text and map amendments are being sought to build the mega-development, hadn’t donated to any commissioners on the board and "definitely not to me (as far as I know).“ Robert Lindsay did, in fact, make the maximum allowable $1,000 contribution to Satcher’s campaign and, as constituents have complained, Satcher failed to give voice to the significant opposition to the project in his district, including from the Parrish Civic Association, by far, the most organized resident group in his District 1. I suppose not enough of them support the abortion ordinance.

To be fair, many pro-life residents have suggested that the ordinance is a dumb idea for the very obvious reasons that 1.) Manatee County doesn’t have a single abortion clinic and 2.) Such an ordinance would invite an onslaught of litigation, costing taxpayers dearly, a foolish investment given the fact that, sing along if you know the tune, WE DO NOT HAVE ANY ABORTION CLINICS!

And, as fellow Republican commissioner Misty Servia pointed out, this matter is conveniently playing out elsewhere, meaning that Manatee County will soon have a definitive answer on whether or not it has the ability to pass such an ordinance without engaging in divisive public discourse and expensive litigation that will soon be made moot by whatever the Supreme Court ultimately decides. But as Van Ostenbridge once pointed out, Servia’s unwillingness to take a hard position on the matter will only lead to an onslaught of attack ads against her in next year’s Republican primary, and that, my friends, is the real value of this ordinance. It won’t save a single unborn life, but it may take down one or two political lives, allowing commissioners like Servia and pro-choice at-large Republican Carol Whitmore to be replaced by suits even emptier than those that prevailed in the last cycle.

Meanwhile, my Wednesday morning jog on Holmes Beach was a little more difficult, as it involved sidestepping a lot of dead and bloated fish that were rotting on the sand, the result of yet another red tide outbreak. My drive to and from work that morning involved the usual nightmare of gridlock throughout the central corridor, which was lined by homeless residents, and my Facebook feed contained the usual onslaught of posts from people trying desperately to find an affordable living situation in Manatee County.

These, of course, are real problems that require actual hard work rather than just the throwing of red meat. That's also why they don't get solved. Welcome to America, 2021, where if it can’t be expressed on an outrage-charged internet meme, it has no place in the world of public policy. And until enough voters start paying attention to more than just salacious attack ads and instead do the work involved in selecting qualified candidates, none of it will change. The quality of our elected officials will just continue to degrade in direct correlation with our inability to solve the very real challenges that plague us.