VOLUME 4 ISSUE 17
Calling for volunteers
$2
Pg A9
APRIL 28 - MAY 4, 2023
NEEDS, NOT WANTS
MCFR outlines the department’s significant list of needs for people, buildings and equipment to the county commission.
In a ‘heartbeat’ How much will women’s healthcare change if DeSantis’ Heartbeat Protection Act goes into effect? By Julie Garisto julie@magnoliamediaco.com
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Left and bottom right: Recent training of new recruits. [Supplied by MCFR] Top right: File photo: A new firetruck is shown at Marion County Fire Rescue Station 28 in Rolling Greens in Ocala on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2020. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2020.
By Jennifer Hunt Murty jennifer@ocalagazette.com
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arion County Fire Rescue leaders recently shared with Marion County commissioners their multimillion list of what they emphasized are needs, not wants, in order to provide fire services to the growing county in the coming years.
To build new stations and remodel others, MCFR would need $117 million over the next 15 years, officials told the Board of County Commissioners at the April 6 budget workshop. At least two stations, they said, are needed immediately. With new fire trucks, ambulances, and additional staff positions to run the vehicles, the fire department estimates a budget need of $134,750,000.
As stark as these figures are, they do not account for inflation or expected increases in payroll. MCFR has been struggling to attract and keep workers due to a competitive market for the fewer firefighters and paramedics who are entering the field. MCFR officials told the board they were not holding back communicating See MCFR needs, page A3
Half-sister act
DNA testing unlocks mystery of biological connections for 2 local women. By Andy Fillmore andy@ocalagazette.com
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Sisters Karey Carlton-Yarborough, left, and Tara Bauer, right, hold a photo from when they were united on August 12, 2022, as they pose together on the beach at Karey’s home on Lake Weir in Ocklawaha on Tuesday, April 18, 2023. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2023.
wo half-sisters, one given up for adoption in 1966, seven years before the other was born, met face to face for the first time last year after both took Ancestry.com DNA tests and results indicated they had a 28% match. Karey Carlton-Yarborough, who was given up for adoption 57 years ago by her biological mother, Nancy Cromer-Marino, met her halfsister Tara Bauer, 49, for the first time ever on Aug. 12 at The Legacy Restaurant at Nancy Lopez Country Club in The Villages. The two half-sisters had lived less than perhaps 20 miles apart in two different counties over the years and likely crossed paths. Carlton-Yarborough said meeting her sister was “overwhelming and exciting.” “We spent time comparing similarities at our first meeting. We
both talk with our hands,” she said describing one of the siblings’ shared mannerisms. Bauer also described the first meeting. “It was like seeing my mom and my aunt at the same time,” she remarked. The siblings’ path to the 2022 meeting rewinds back to 1966. Nancy Cromer, then a single mom living in Miami, was working three jobs to support three other children and the relationship resulting in the birth of CarltonYarborough didn’t work out. Cromer sought a better life for her infant daughter and the adoption was made final in August, 1966. Carlton-Yarborough grew up in South Miami with a loving and caring adoptive mom and dad, Jean (Newman) Carlton and Bobby Carlton. “My adoptive mother told me I was a special gift from God because she couldn’t have children,” See Sisters, page A2
hile the national conversation recently has centered on the legal debate around Mifepristone, an oral medication known as “the abortion pill,” in Florida, it remains uncertain how women’s lives will be affected by a bill that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law earlier this month. SB 300, the Heartbeat Protection Act, became law on April 13, and the State Capitol press release announcing its passage is still the top Google result when you search it by name. The new law prohibits abortions once the fetus has a detectible heartbeat, at six weeks. Previous bills similar to SB 300 were introduced by Florida Sen. Dennis Baxley, R-Lady Lake, (SB 792), and State Rep. Mike Hill, R-Pensacola, filed House Bill 235 in January, considered to be a companion bill. Georgia and Mississippi lawmakers have also recently banned abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected. “I think we’ll see some improvement in moving away from the idea that we should recommend, enforce, encourage people to destroy their own infants,” Baxley told WLRN in South Florida. However, not everyone agrees with the six-week ban. A poll in February by the University of North Florida found that 75% of the state’s residents either somewhat or strongly oppose the six-week ban—including 61% of Republicans. According to physicians who specialize in reproductive health, the term “fetal heartbeat,” as used in the anti-abortion law in Texas, is not based on science. What the ultrasound machine detects in an embryo at six weeks of pregnancy is electrical activity from cells that aren’t yet a heart, and the sound attributed to a pulse is manufactured by the ultrasound machine. Likewise, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) opposes any proposals, laws, or policies that attempt to confer “personhood” to a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus. According to their official position posted on ACOG’s website, “These laws and policies are used to limit, restrict, or outright prohibit access to care for women and people seeking reproductive healthcare, including those who are pregnant, those who are trying to prevent pregnancy, and those who are trying to become pregnant, and they have been used as the basis of surveillance and prosecution of pregnant people.” See Six weeks, page A8
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Triple Crown History................... A4 Letters to the Editor..................... A8 Cartoons......................................... B2 Puzzles............................................. B4 Calendar......................................... B5
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