Richard Lightbourn

FREE National Movement Leader Dr. Hubert Minnis told parliamentarians yesterday that the party was blindsided by Montagu MP Richard Lightbourn’s controversial proposal for the state-sponsored sterilisation of women.

A week on since he offered up the offensive initiative at the party’s national convention, Montagu MP Richard Lightbourn was lambasted in the House of Assembly by the governing Progressive Liberal Party.

In an official statement to parliament, Dr. Minnis explained that the party’s Convention Committee had implemented a review procedure for all speeches proposed to be delivered at the convention.

According to the Killarney MP, Mr. Lightbourn’s speech was never submitted for vetting prior to it being put forward to a national audience – despite several requests made to the writer of the speech.

Dr. Minnis said the FNM was “consequently entirely unaware” of the contents of Lightbourn’s speech.

In the first sitting of the House of Assembly since the embattled MP made those remarks, Englerston MP Glennys Hanna Martin suggested that Mr Lightbourn’s “cruel, insensitive and offensive” comments placed the Bahamas in a “negative spotlight” in both the Caribbean region and globally.

Mrs. Hanna Martin asserted that the comments were reminiscent of a “toxic stereotype” that has a “tragic history” within the Bahamas, insisting that the proposal rehashed a “disdainful bias” against working class Bahamian women.

“(His comments) are reminiscent of very dark days in human history where sterilization was used as a means of the arrogant elite for controlling the fertility of ‘undesirable’ populations, such as the poor, black people, other people of colour, unmarried mothers, the disabled and the mentally ill.”

“His comments are a blight and an indictment, an insult and an assault on poor women in our country perhaps the most vulnerable grouping in our society,” Mrs. Hanna Martin told the House.

Mr. Lightbourn’s contentious comments were made on the second night of the FNM’s national convention at the Melia Nassau Beach Resort last week.

The Montagu MP, setting out initiatives that he felt could form part of his party’s crime plan if elected, Mr. Lightbourn said it was necessary for the Bahamas to consider adopting the practice sterilizing unwed mothers after the birth of their second child.

Mr. Lightbourn prefaced the ill-fated suggestion with a generalisation that children born in unstable family situations often times grow to participate in criminal activities.

Responding to this claim, Mrs. Hanna Martin said: “Rather than advocate for support which would provide an easier environment for women to love, nurture and support their children, the Member instead advocates in a cold and calculated fashion for the stifling of her rights to reproduce as a member of the human family.”

She continued: “Rather than anticipate greater empowerment for women and her children, the Member anticipates the desirability of less classrooms. Indeed Mr. Speaker, what is most worrisome is that this very demographic of Bahamian women makes up a significant portion of his own constituency.”

“Perhaps this provided the inspiration for his ideas,” she added.

Mrs. Hanna Martin maintained that reproductive rights are human rights.

She further inferred that Mr. Lightbourn’s thought-process wasn’t aligned with that of the overall country.

Across the floor, FNM Leader Dr. Hubert Minnis again moved to separate the views offered up by Mr. Lightbourn from those of the party.

The FNM immediately issued a statement to distance itself from the Montagu MP’s proposal last Thursday, stating that the party did not believe in restricting the reproductive rights of anyone.

“Let me state unequivocally, and assure this Honourable House and the Bahamian people that the Free National Movement has no such policy, no such plans and no such intention,” stated Dr. Minnis on Wednesday.

“On behalf of the Free National Movement, I absolutely repudiate and disassociate myself and the party which I lead from any such proposed policy as that postulated by the Member for Montagu,” he added.

Last Friday, a day after he first expressed his claims, Mr. Lightbourn issued a prepared apology.

It read: “I would like to sincerely apologize to the Bahamian public and women in particular for my comments made last night at the Free National Movement convention.

“It was never my intention to offend anyone but to speak to the need for effective parenting and the support for a strong family structure which will go a long way toward solving many of our country’s social ills. It is a woman’s right to decide what to do with her body.”

“I received immediate and justified criticism for my comments. It was an extremely poor decision on my part. My comments in no way shape or form reflect the position of the FNM.”

On Wednesday, the Montagu MP in Parliament reiterated his regret over the offensive comments.

By Ricardo Wells, Tribune Staff Reporter

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