On Thursday, Ronda Storms led the rabid pack of fundamentalist commissioner dogs on a personal attack against one of the few sources for unbiased women’s health care in the Tampa area.
The idea came from Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms: eliminate funding for a teen educational program sponsored by Planned Parenthood.
Commissioners went along with her Thursday, while expressing none of their personal feelings about the nonprofit group that supports women’s reproductive rights.
But Storms had made her feelings clear in a conversation last week, said Barbara Zdravecky, who oversees Planned Parenthood in 15 counties, including the Tampa Bay area.
Storms supports life – Zdravecky remembers hearing her say – and Planned Parenthood supports death.
“I have to say I was pretty shaken,” Zdravecky said. “I’m used to taking hits. But I was surprised at her lack of humanity.”
Zdravecky, other nonprofit officials and proponents had just finished lobbying the commission the night of July 21 and were standing around after nearly three hours of budget discussion.
They wanted commissioners to give them $39,500 during the next two years for Source Teen Theater, a $130,000 program in which Tampa teens teach other kids about such topics as sexual activity, drugs, gangs and family violence.
Storms remembers the conversation, too.
She had called for Planned Parenthood’s removal from the budget. Zdravecky asked her to reconsider. Surely, Zdravecky asked, the commissioner must support preventing teen pregnancy, even if she doesn’t support Planned Parenthood.
“There is nothing you can say or do for me to support you,” the commissioner said, according to Storms’ version of the conversation. “Thank you very much for your comments.”
But Zdravecky pressed on.
“I am prolife and you’re not,” Storms remembers saying.
Storms thanked them and told them she could not support the request. She even remembers that she smiled at them.
……Zdravecky remembers a more blunt conversation where Storms said, “I am prolife, you are prodeath” twice.
“I believe anyone who professes to be a proponent of Christianity would treat me with more dignity than the way I was treated,” Zdravecky said.
……Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Central Florida has been in Hillsborough for at least 25 years and operates a clinic in Temple Terrace. About 95 percent of the 65,000 clients Planned Parenthood sees annually in the region aren’t coming for abortion services, Zdravecky said.
……During the budget discussion that led to Thursday’s 5-2 vote, Storms didn’t comment other than to call for the elimination of the project’s funding.
Commissioner Brian Blair spoke at length about how he favored the way the Pregnancy Center of Plant City operated. He said that its crisis pregnancy counselors encourage “the young women to choose life” and that its executive director raises money without asking for county help.
……Castor said that Hillsborough had $8-million to give to nonprofit groups.
“Their request,” she said, “was one of the more modest.”
Previously, Ronda has suggested that the working poor obtain birth control so that those pesky little babies stop falling out of financially challenged uteri. Now she is responsible for de-funding a program that encourages kids to think and act responsibly.
I honestly think that some stray shards of glass may have migrated north from her scarred and bloody elbows and become lodged firmly in her fundamentally flawed brain.
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.
Every county has their one lone nut. It’s too bad the others seem to follow the nut. When is Storms up for re-election? She needs to be followed 24 hrs a day. Eventually she will slip up.