The Tribune

AFTER succeeding in their demand that MP Richard Lightbourn be removed as a contender for the Montagu seat in the next election because of his unacceptable solution to our crime epidemic, it would be interesting to know what plans these same PLP women now have to solve a problem that is steadily destroying our society.

Yamacraw MP Melanie Griffin, Englerston MP Glenys Hanna Martin, and Seabreeze MP Hope Strachan - branded as “despicable” Mr Lightbourn’s proposal for state-sponsored sterilisation of unmarried women after their second child as a partial solution to our crime problem.

Mr Lightbourn, in an effort to solve a very serious social problem, created a moral problem for himself for which he quickly apologised.

“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,” he said early the next morning.

“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,” he concluded.

However, the matter can’t end there. It is true that Mr Lightbourn made an error of judgment in his solution for the problem, but, he, like everyone else in this country, has to find a solution to a serious problem that is going to crush our nation. Tying of tubes is certainly not the answer.

As we recently recalled in this column the distress some years ago of a young doctor who remarked that the Princess Margaret Hospital’s gynaecological ward was a factory churning out this country’s future problems – children under 15 years giving birth. His words were prophetic … unwanted children turned loose on a society that had no plans to support them. Crime was the only escape route for many of them.

“We need to have this conversation with regard to sexual responsibility to our country and I don’t think that we are going to serve this House and the country well unless we stop pushing this matter under the table,” said Mr Lightbourn. Denying him his parliamentary seat is not the solution. Although, his solution to the problem was certainly not acceptable, it did not reduce the enormity of our social crisis. So instead of the hand-wringing and crying foul, it is time for some very serious decision making.

The Bahamas with the background of a strong moral fibre in which we grew up has long since disappeared. Self-gratification is the name of the game, whether it be gathering a troupe of “Sugar Daddies” to support the unwanted offspring that grow into society’s rudderless misfits, or the get-rich-quick group with no moral compass, Bahamians have lost their way.

In a report in June last year from The Sandals Foundation in New York in a plan to assist The Bahamas’ Delta Sigma Theta Sorority to assist teenage mothers, it was reported that about 700 teenage girls are impregnated each year in The Bahamas, with about 20 per cent of them eventually becoming pregnant again while still in their teens.

The aim of this Sorority is to try to provide admirable support in various areas, including pregnancy prevention, spiritual enrichment sessions, necessary tools to rejoin the workforce, and continuing support after they have left the programme.

With 20 per cent of them repeating what at first could have been considered a moral misfortune, their lapse seems to indicate that the old-fashioned way of banning them as society’s social outcasts was an even greater moral deterrent. Not that we are advocating that we return to those days, but religion and morality in the training of our young people should get more emphasis. As for the men, they always seem to get off scot free. If men were forced to shoulder their responsibilities by providing for these unwanted offspring until they were 18, they might think twice before trotting out on the town looking for female prey. And older men, who take advantage of the young, should be named and shamed.

In June this year, the Inter-Development Bank released a report on Crime and Violence in which a question was asked as to the causes of crime in the Bahamas.

“Many Bahamians,” said the report, “will cite substance abuse, unemployment, poverty, poor parenting, teenage pregnancy, absentee fathers and the breakdown of social capital (defined as the incapacity to transmit positive values to young generations).”

In 2014, The Bahamas’ homicide rate was 31.9 per 100,000 population, which is higher than the average homicide rate for the Caribbean region (16 per 100,000).

It said that when compared to the homicide rates with four other Caribbean countries, “The Bahamas shows a worrying trend. The homicide rate in the Bahamas has continued to climb, while rates in Barbados and Suriname have stayed constant at much lower levels, and rates in Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica have experienced sharp declines since 2008 and 2009, respectively.”

It also said that while “the RBPF reported a drop in the number of armed robberies from 2012 to 2013, they have increased 54 per cent in the last decade”. The murder rate has “more than doubled in the last 10 years and is now among the highest in the Caribbean region.”

Although the report did not give much credit to the poor data keeping at the Princess Margaret Hospital, what figures the hospital did have showed that “the number of gunshot and stabbing wounds far outweigh the number of murders in The Bahamas. For example, although there were 119 murders in 2013, there were 4.5 times as many stabbings and shootings”.

Stabbings and shootings appear to be increasing at an even higher rate than murder, it reported.

Also the “average rate of rapes reported over 2009–2013 was 27 per 100,000 population, which is above the already high Caribbean regional average. Emergency room data shows that this number is far under-representative of the number of actual cases taking place, yet proportionally far fewer resources and policy initiatives have been dedicated to reducing rape than other types of crime.

We would highly recommend that instead of these PLP women hand-wringing over tube tying, they dedicate their time to finding solutions to help lift this country out of its cultural decadence.