By Jerry Roker
For Bahamas Press
Yesterday, white FNM MP Dick Lightbourn doubled down on his proposal to have poor, black women sterilized by the state. He says his proposal was misunderstood. Well blow me down. To make matters worse, he got support from his erstwhile colleague Mrs. Loretta Butler-Turner, whom he backed in her recent unsuccessful attempt to become leader of the FNM.
That Mr. Dick Lightbourn, a white man would porpose that the state employ such a barbaric and humiliating procedure on poor black women, is despicable, racist and representative of the level of thinking that existed under the UBP regime.
There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Lightbourn voted “NO” on the gender equality questions raised in the referendum held back in June, as his proposed policy smacks of disrespect and contempt for the fundamental rights of Bahamian women.
What makes Mr. Lightbourn’s proposal even more sickening, silly, and frightening, is that it assumes that women make babies by themselves and men are totally absolved from any responsibility in the rearing and sustenance of the children they fathered.
His proposal was in no way some off the cuff comment he would have made to a reporter who might have caught him in an unguarded moment, and pushed a microphone into his face while asking him to respond to, let’s say a question on crime. His proposal came from prepared notes that he read from! He chanted his heart! Furthermore, it is my belief that as a minimum, Mrs. Butler-Turner knew of his proposal prior to his delivering them. Others in her faction might have known also.
Mr. Lightbourn, in my view, based on this latest pronouncement (of course, during this current parliamentary term in particular, there were others), has disqualified himself from holding public office in our Bahamaland.
