DeSantis appoints ‘pro-life’ radiologist to the Florida Board of Medicine

As abortion rights advocates in Florida step up their campaign for a November ballot measure that would strengthen abortion rights in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis once again on Friday showed residents exactly which side he’s on.

Gov. DeSantis, who launched his own political committee this year in part to help defeat the abortion rights ballot measure, appointed to the Florida Board of Medicine on Friday Steven Christie, a local radiologist, attorney and author of a book titled Speaking for the Unborn: 30-Second Pro-Life Rebuttals to Pro-Life Arguments.

The Florida Board of Medicine is a 15-member board of Governor appointees established to “ensure that every physician practicing in this state meets minimum requirements for safe practice,” according to its 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 as a healthcare practitioner. All appointments are subject to approval by the Florida Senate, which is dominated by Republican lawmakers who approved the state’s six-week abortion ban before it was signed into law.

Christie, the local radiologist newly appointed by DeSantis, is also scheduled as a featured speaker at the upcoming “Culture of Life Conference” being presented by the Catholic Charities of Central Florida in October. The CCCF is a ministry of the Diocese of Orlando that, according to state campaign finance records, has donated at least $50,000 to a political committee created to advocate against Florida’s abortion rights measure, which will appear on the ballot this fall as Amendment 4.

If approved by more than 60 percent of Florida voters, the measure would add to the Florida Constitution that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” Viability is generally interpreted by medical practitioners as roughly 24 weeks of gestation, or pregnancy.

The political committee funded in part by Catholic Charities, dubbed Florida Voters Against Extremism, is one of four political committees that have been created in an effort to defeat Amendment 4, which is being led by a political committee bankrolled by liberal organizations that support abortion access, including reproductive healthcare provider Planned Parenthood, the Tides Foundation (a progressive nonprofit), the American Civil Liberties Union and wealthy philanthropists, as well as an extensive list of individual donors who have contributed anywhere from $5 to $25.

Catholic Charities is a faith-based nonprofit organization that, granted, does more than explicitly oppose abortion rights and offer “post-abortive healing.” The nonprofit also runs community-based housing, health and social assistance programs that are often funded in part by state or local government money.

Some of the local chapters in the state, including chapters in St. Petersburg, Boynton Beach and Palm Beach, also run state-funded anti-abortion programs that aim to convince pregnant people not to seek out abortion services, luring pregnant people into their “clinics” with free pregnancy tests, sonograms or free items for babies like diapers.

The Florida Pregnancy Care Network, a state-funded “alternatives to abortion” program, gave Catholic Charities-run programs a total of $410,000 in 2022, according to the nonprofit’s latest tax filing. Altogether, the state allocates millions of taxpayer dollars to such programs each year. Many don’t even have medical professionals on staff. Most, if not all, do not have a state medical license, meaning they are not 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 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 educational institute, even though the concept of “life at conception” is largely viewed as a philosophical or religious concept rather than one based in scientific fact.

“The court said that when life begins is up to whoever is running your state — whether they are wrong or not, or 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 Roe v. Wade decision.

Christie was appointed to the board Friday along with Dr. “J” Matthew Knight, a dermatologist and founder of the Knight Dermatology Institute; Dr. Scot Ackerman, medical director of the Ackerman Cancer; and Dr. Hector Vila, the managing partner and anesthesiologist at Pediatric Dental Anesthesia Associates.

Vila formerly served on the Board of Medicine under former Gov. Rick Scott’s administration, and was reappointed by DeSantis to the board in 2019. Ahead of his reappointment that year, Vila argued in support of a restrictive abortion-related law in an appeals court case between the state and a Gainesville abortion clinic. The latter challenged the state over a law that requires patients obtaining an abortion procedure to schedule two separate appointments with an abortion provider that includes a minimum 24-hour waiting period between appointments.

Vila argued at the same that a less-than-24-hour waiting period between appointments for an abortion procedure “would fall below the acceptable medical standard of care.” Critics of the law have described it as unnecessarily restrictive and a barrier to care, especially as the state further limits abortion access.

The Florida Board of Medicine has been criticized in the recent past for advancing rules on prohibiting gender-affirming care for transgender youth, which state lawmakers and DeSantis later codified into law before a federal judge struck the ban down as unconstitutional. In 2022, the board and DeSantis 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 care.

Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | or sign up for our RSS Feed