Photo via the Governor’s Office
As abortion rights activists in Florida step up their campaign for a November ballot proposal that would strengthen abortion rights in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis once again showed voters Friday which side he is on.
Governor DeSantis, who this year set up his own political committee with the goal of preventing the abortion vote, on Friday appointed Steven Christie, a local radiologist, lawyer and author of a book entitled Speaking for the Unborn: 30-second pro-life rebuttals to pro-life arguments.
The Florida Board of Medicine is a 15-member board appointed by the governor and designed to “ensure that every physician practicing in this state meets the minimum requirements for safe practice,” according to the board’s website. Twelve of the members must be licensed physicians in good standing, while the other three must be state residents who have never been licensed to practice medicine. All appointments must be approved by the Florida Senate, which is dominated by Republican lawmakers who had already passed the state’s six-week abortion ban before it was passed.
Christie, the local radiologist newly appointed by DeSantis, is also scheduled to be a keynote speaker at the upcoming Culture of Life Conference, hosted in October by Catholic Charities of Central Florida. The CCCF is an entity of the Diocese of Orlando, which, according to state campaign finance records, has donated at least $50,000 to a political committee formed to oppose Florida’s abortion rights bill, which will appear on the ballot this fall as Amendment 4.
If more than 60 percent of Florida voters approve, the measure would add to the state constitution that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability is achieved or when necessary to protect the health of the patient, as determined by the patient’s physician.” Medical professionals generally define viability as about 24 weeks of pregnancy.
The political committee, called Florida Voters Against Extremism, funded in part by Catholic Charities, is one of four political committees created to overturn Amendment 4. The committee is led by a political committee funded by liberal organizations that support abortion access, including reproductive health care provider Planned Parenthood, the Tides Foundation (a progressive nonprofit), the American Civil Liberties Union and wealthy philanthropists, as well as a long list of individual donors who have given between $5 and $25.
Catholic Charities is a nonprofit, faith-based organization that not only explicitly opposes abortion rights and offers “abortion healing,” but also operates community-based housing, health, and social assistance programs, often funded in part by state or local funds.
Some of the state’s chapters, including chapters in St. Petersburg, Boynton Beach and Palm Beach, also run state-funded anti-abortion programs aimed at discouraging pregnant women from seeking abortion services by luring pregnant women to their “clinics” with free pregnancy tests, ultrasounds or free baby items such as diapers.
The Florida Pregnancy Care Network, a state-funded program for “alternatives to abortion,” donated a total of $410,000 to programs run by Catholic Charities in 2022, according to the nonprofit’s most recent tax return. In total, the state provides millions of taxpayer dollars to such programs each year. Many don’t even have medical professionals on staff. Most, if not all, don’t have state medical licenses, meaning they aren’t bound by HIPAA privacy laws.
Dr. Steven Christie specializes in oncology and body imaging, according to Catholic Charities, and claims to be “pro-science.” “There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that life begins at conception,” Dr. Christie wrote in a blog post for the St. Paul Center, a faith-based, nonprofit research and education institute, although the concept of “life at conception” is largely viewed as a philosophical or religious concept rather than one based on scientific fact.
“The court said that when life begins depends on whoever is running your state – whether they are wrong or not, and whether you agree with them or not,” Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California-Davis, told NPR after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark ruling. Roe v. Wade Decision.
Christie was named to the board on Friday along with Dr. “J” Matthew Knight, a dermatologist and founder of the Knight Dermatology Institute, Dr. Scot Ackerman, medical director of Ackerman Cancer, and Dr. Hector Vila, managing partner and anesthesiologist at Pediatric Dental Anesthesia Associates.
Vila previously served on the Board of Medicine under former Gov. Rick Scott’s administration and was reappointed to the board by DeSantis in 2019. Before his reappointment this year, Vila argued for a restrictive abortion law in an appeal between the state and a Gainesville abortion clinic, which had challenged the state over a law that requires patients seeking abortions to schedule two separate appointments with an abortion provider, with a waiting period of at least 24 hours between appointments.
Vila also argued that a waiting period of less than 24 hours between appointments for an abortion procedure would be “below acceptable medical standards.” Critics of the law called it unnecessarily restrictive and a barrier to medical care, especially as the state continues to restrict access to abortion.
The Florida Board of Medicine has been criticized in the recent past for proposing rules banning gender-affirming treatments for transgender youth, which were later signed into law by state lawmakers and DeSantis before a federal judge struck down the ban as unconstitutional. In 2022, the board and DeSantis have faced criticism after DeSantis was caught appointing two new members to the board who support conversion therapy for trans and gender nonconforming children and oppose gender-affirming treatments.
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