Legislators want pregnant girls reported (FL)

[KG]

Legislators want pregnant girls reported
They say it's to counter abuse, but others fear it would scare teens away from getting help.
By JENNIFER LIBERTO and REBECCA CATALANELLO
Published March 7, 2007

TALLAHASSEE - Health care professionals would be required to call police if they know or suspect a patient 15 or younger is pregnant, under a bill filed recently in the House and Senate.

In addition, doctors who perform abortions on such girls would be required to collect a DNA sample from the fetus and send it to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

State Sen. Ronda Storms, a Brandon Republican, has joined forces with a top House Republican, Rep. Dennis Baxley of Ocala, on the bill, which aims to crack down on underage sexual abuse by having health care professionals assume pregnant teens are crime victims.

Doctors and nurses at abortion clinics, hospitals or even counseling agencies would have to report underage pregnancies within 24 hours of knowing about such a pregnancy or risk losing their state license.

The report would trigger a criminal investigation examining whether the girl was a victim of a crime, such as statutory rape, which can include sex between two minors who are under 16.

MORE>>> http://www.sptimes.com/2007/03/07/State/Legislators_want_preg.shtml

um, yes, she's a wacko...

[Maddy McCall]

1. End result: pregnant teens refusing prenatal care.

You're a genius, Ronda. Pure genius. :eyes:

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Or getting back alley abortions

[Porcupine]

12. or leaving their babies in trash bags.

What pregnant teens need is absolute unconditional acceptance. Take them in, don't pressure them to tell you what happened until they are ready. They will tell you or not.

The fear of being alone is so strong in these girls sometimes that they will do anything to keep that fear quiet. That's why these girls get pregnant in the first place.

[sniffa]

2. do they reaLLy need the yeLLow stars though?

don't their expanding beLLies mark them as such? :shrug:

[Matariki]

4. Great, and expect a rise in home brewed abortions

punches in the stomach, falling down stairs, pennyroyal and tansy tea. blah.

[sinkingfeeling]

5. Wow, talk about right of privacy issues! Who do these fascists think they are?

Do they really think that most teenage girls get pregnant from 'crimes'? Most get pregnant because they are ill-advised and ignorant of what to do to avoid getting that way from their teenage boyfriends!

Why does the RW what to turn everybody against everybody else; making doctors and nurses and teachers into spies instead of people to be trusted?

I wish the 'Nanny state' would go away!

[donsu]

6. girls and women's wombs do not belong to the govt.

it's none of their damn business.

the state of Va tried to get a law saying all women who miscarried had to notify the police within 24 hrs. thankfully it did not pass.

women and girls are not 'things' men need to control. they can't even control themselves.

[Warren DeMontague]

20. How about saying that people's bodies belong to themselves, period?

And that even though some people may do things with their bodies that other people don't approve of, it's none of their damn business.

[madfloridian]

7. Ronda Ronda Ronda....what an angry Christian woman.

State Sen. Ronda Storms has joined forces with Rep. Dennis Baxley, of Ocala, on the bill.

Ronda once saw a TV show with a woman masturbating, and she decided to try to regulate everything. She thinks everything is nasty and ugly and would like to control your lives.

Dennis Baxley, Jeb's buddy...he's a real peach. He wants to get rid of liberal professors, teach creationism, keep contraceptives from rape victims because he's a good Christian man.

[LiberalFighter]

14. This poor excuse of a human being...

(Background info... this is her first term in the State Senate)

When she was a Hillsborough county commissioner

Storms said she has worked $2.01-an-hour jobs in her life, spent nights at Salvation Army and lived in her car. But she worked and put herself through school, she said, "crawled across glass on my elbows.

Come on now she had to have crawled lower than that. She was probably naked and enjoyed crawling across all that glass that she had to.



Storms Zones in on her own financial gain
Ethics complaints against County Commissioner Ronda Storms? No....couldn't be....could it? Commissioner Ronda Storms: She is most known for her rude, disruptive and almost violent behavior in public meetings. She also (alledgedly) had an employee fired for making comments inappropriate at a public hearing but that person was there on their own time and did not identify themselves as a county employee. That employee is suing. She also has a history of being absent at important budget hearings but never missing a hearing when sex is the topic of discussion. She represents the east portion of Hillsborough County but we guess she represents herself mostly.

In just four years, Storms has insulted almost every person in Hillsborough County who is not like her. She's assailing values that truly matter. Things like equality and free expression. This is America, and Storms can think and say whatever she wants. But the way she does it tends to paint people who don't think like her as, somehow, dirty.

Just as an example for you, she quipped on whether a law school devoted to graduating minority lawyers could do its job: "We can get them through law school, but we can't get them to seem to pass the Bar."

Storms seems to be voting new laws in to benefit herself. Residents, mainly from Thonotosassa in east Hillsborough and Keystone in the northwest part of the county, are angry. Storms voted on an issue they think benefits her family's landscaping business. They want the vote overturned and Storms held accountable.


* * * *
When asked if the comment about minorities being capable to pass the Bar was offensive to her, Mary White Darby, president of the Florida A&M Tampa alumni association, responded, "How could she not offend you?"

[madfloridian]

15. There was someone running against her...but he had no party support.

No one backed him up. I can't think of his name.

[Pacifist Patriot]

18. *shudder* She sounds just like Jackie Colon and Helen Voltz in Brevard Co.

[Sequoia]

22. Aw, so she crawled across broken glass on her elbows. Well you can't top Hugh Glass:

http://www.rosyinn.com/more005.html

At a point about 12 miles south of Lemmon, SD, now marked by a small monument, Glass surprised a grizzly bear and her two cubs while scouting for the party. He was away from the rest of the group at the time and the grizzly attacked him before he could fire his rifle. Using only his knife and bare hands, Glass wrestled the full-grown bear to the ground and killed it, but in the process he was badly mauled and bitten.
His companions, hearing his screams, arrived on the scene to see a bloody and badly maimed Glass barely alive and the bear lying on top of him. They shot the bear head and uncovered Glass's mangled body. They bandaged his wounds the best they could and waited for him to die. The party was in a hurry to get to Yellowstone, so Henry asked for volunteers to stay until Glass was dead and then bury him. John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger agreed and immediately began digging the grave. But after three days Glass was still alive when Fitzgerald and Bridger began to panic as a band of hostile Indians was seen approaching. The two men picked up Glass's rifle, knife and other equipment and dumped him into the open grave. They threw a bearskin over him and shoveled in a thin layer of dirt and leaves, leaving Glass for dead.
But Glass did not die. After an unknown time, he regained consciousness to a very grim situation. He was alone and unarmed in hostile Indian territory. He had a broken leg and his wounds were festering. His scalp was almost torn away and the flesh on his back had been ripped away so that his rib bones were exposed. The nearest help was 200 miles away at Ft. Kiowa. His only protection was the bearskin hide.
Glass set his own broken leg and on September 9, 1823, began crawling south overland toward the Cheyenne River about 100 miles away. Fever and infection took their toll and frequently rendered him unconscious. Once he passed out and awoke to discover a huge grizzly standing over him. According to the legend, the animal licked his maggot-infested wounds. This may have saved Glass from further infection and death. Glass survived mostly on wild berries and roots. On one occasion he was able to drive two wolves from a downed bison calf and eat the raw meat.
According to Glass's own account he was driven by revenge. He told others that the only thing that kept him going was the thought of killing the men who had left him for dead.
It took Glass two months to crawl to the Cheyenne River. There he built a raft from a fallen tree and allowed the current to carry him downstream to the Missouri and on to Ft. Kiowa, a point about four miles north of the present-day Chamberlain.

[madfloridian]

8. Recommended...Florida again.

.

[zbdent]

9. This will be shut down when the DNA tests come back

with big, fat RED Rs on the results ... all too often from the father of the pregnant teen ...

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. Why not chastity belts, burqas, and public whippings?

"The only thing I ever learned in Lubbock, Texas, was that Jesus loves you, you're going to burn in hell, and that sex is dirty, filthy and disgusting and you should save it for someone you love." - Author's name forgotten

[scorpiogirl]

11. Oh jeez, DNA from the fetus?

WTF?! How about stop trying to teach horny teenagers about abstinence and get them some real life information on birth control. Wouldn't want to try prevention now would we? :sarcasm:

Yes, let's turn pregnancy into a crime for someone, anyone! Damn!

[sutz12]

21. Got to have a positive ID for the death certificate, now don't we?

:sarcasm:

[riona]

13. She doesn't stray from her

preoccupation with sex. Sorry that the bikini bar thing didn't work for you, Rhonda.

[LiberalFighter]

16. Her husband is a deacon at their church... Someone should demand

that they prove he is the father of their daughter. DNA testing!!!!!!!!

[Thothmes]

33. Proof

Florida law automatically assumes that he is the father, because they were married to each other at the time the child was born.

[LiberalFighter]

34. Why did you respond that way?

I wasn't interested in what Florida law or any law pertaining to fatherhood.

This wacky woman wants a requirement of cases involved to collect a DNA sample and send it to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

If she wants that requirement than I want her husband to prove he is the father of her daughter.

[RaleighNCDUer]

17. is it too late to give florida back to spain? nt

[Warren DeMontague]

19. So if two 15 year olds have sex with each other...

who gets charged? Both?

[Rosemary2205]

23. 2 minors under 16 is statutory rape?

who do they charge? Both of them? Yeah right. The boy goes to prison. Idiocy......

Georgia has locked up a bunch of 17 yr old boys who had sex with girls 15 or 16. We finally got the law changed (I think it now mandates more than a 3 yr age difference) but it's a real battle to get the law passed to force the old cases back into the court system.

[SoCalDem]

31. The law should reflect "school attendence"

Siince most school diustricts abandoned "junior high", and routinely dump 14 yr olds in with the general high school population, it's entirely possible now for a senior (18 yrs old) to "date" a freshman (14 yrs old)..

When the state says it's peachy-keen to put these two "kids" on the same campus, it's unrealistic for the state to assume that they will not date each other..

Junior High systems keep age groups "appropriate".. Grade 7,8,9 pretty much means that 12,13,14,15 will be the range, and "most" 12 &13 yr olds probably do not date.. and most of the kids in that range are likely to be car-less, so by the time a kid is a sophomore (and 16) they might have enough confidence and experience from junior high, to not just be "prey" for the older kids.

The "break-point" should be an "out-of-high schooler" preying on younger kids still in school..

(disclaimer:.. when I was a junior in high school I was dating a terribly immature guy of 23..no sex, though)..

[dkofos]

24. And I thought texas was bad

[struggle4progress]

25. Uh, Florida ALREADY has mandatory reporting for suspected sexual abuse of children ...

except it has an exception when such reporting would interfere with the provision of medical services. So the point of the proposed legislation is to remove the exception and require reporting even if that would interfere with provision of medical services?

The 2006 Florida Statutes

39.201 Mandatory reports of child abuse, abandonment, or neglect; mandatory reports of death; central abuse hotline

... 2 ... (d) If the report is of an instance of known or suspected child abuse involving impregnation of a child under 16 years of age by a person 21 years of age or older solely under s. 827.04(3), the report shall be made immediately to the appropriate county sheriff's office or other appropriate law enforcement agency. If the report is of an instance of known or suspected child abuse solely under s. 827.04(3), the reporting provisions of this subsection do not apply to health care professionals or other persons who provide medical or counseling services to pregnant children when such reporting would interfere with the provision of medical services ...

http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=Ch0039/SEC201.HTM&Title=-%3E2006-%3ECh0039-%3ESection%20201#0039.201

827.04 Contributing to the delinquency or dependency of a child; penalty

... (3) A person 21 years of age or older who impregnates a child under 16 years of age commits an act of child abuse which constitutes a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084. A person who impregnates a child in violation of this subsection commits an offense under this subsection regardless of whether the person is found to have committed, or has been charged with or prosecuted for, any other offense committed during the course of the same criminal transaction or episode, including, but not limited to, an offense proscribed under s. 800.04, relating to lewd, lascivious, or indecent assault or act upon any person under 16 years of age. Neither the victim's lack of chastity nor the victim's consent is a defense to the crime proscribed under this subsection ...

http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?mode=View%20Statutes&SubMenu=1&App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=827.04&URL=CH0827/Sec04.HTM

[LiberalFighter]

26. Too bad she can't be reported for child abuse

[gollygee]

27. If the girl was a victim of a crime

this bill would do nothing to lessen her victimization. It would just make things worse for her. :(

[Forkboy]

28. Butt the fuck out of people's lives!

Jeez,these shitheels just crawl right out of the woodwork,don't they?

[SoCalDem]

29. "That's going on your permanent record, Missy"..

:eyes:

[porphyrian]

30. They are talking about kids under the age of consent, but I don't know.

I think it's fucked up that this is even an issue.

[GeorgeGist]

32. HIPAA, we have a problem.