STORMS LEADS MOVE TO BLOCK PLANNED PARENTHOOD FUNDING

Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms has taken controversial stands in pushing her far-right agenda. She led the move last month for the county commission to ban any support of, or participating in, gay pride events. Now she has led the panel to block funding for a teen educational programme sponsored by Planned Parenthood.

According to this story in the St. Petersburg Times, Source Teen Theatre is a programme in which Tampa teens teach other kids about such things as sexual activity, drugs, gangs, and family violence. It is the only Planned Parenthood programme that the commission had supported, and then only intermittedly. They had requested a modest $39,500 (it's budget is $130,000) from the $8 million available for nonprofit groups in Hillsborough County.

But Commissioner Storms led the move to block any funding for Source Teen Theatre, reportedly expressing her disdain for Planned Parenthood to the organization's local head Barbara Zdravecky. She says that Storms was quite blunt, saying twice "I am prolife, you are prodeath"

While one may not support Planned Parenthood's abortion services, it does have other programmes that help young people, and Source Teen Theatre is one of them. It deserved the support of the commission.