When sex education for public-school students is considered these days, public wariness over Planned Parenthood’s potential involvement continues.
This was evident at a work-study session of the Tempe Union High School District on Feb. 19 as the district’s sex-education curriculum committee updated the governing board on its work and exchanged thoughts.
The curriculum committee is evaluating different materials that it could recommend to the governing board for a TUHSD sex-education program.
The committee said it looked at what some surrounding areas are offering and is in “kind of a process of elimination.”
One approach, the board was told, is that “Ideally, comprehensive sexuality education should begin in kindergarten and continue through the 12th grade,” as age-appropriate.
However, that seemed outside the scope of this committee.
During the evening’s public-comment period, Bob Hunt arose from the audience and told the school officials, “I am opposed to public schools providing any manner of sex education.”
Hunt said he might have a different belief, except for the fact that a leading candidate in this field is Planned Parenthood, which takes tax money and does more than one-third of a million abortions a year.
“That is not Planned Parenthood. It is planned murder,” he said.
Another audience member standing to speak, Peggy McClain, held up a copy of former Texas Planned Parenthood abortion clinic director Abby Johnson’s book, “Unplanned” (Tyndale House Publishers) and said Johnson mentions the organization having abortion quotas.
(Johnson left Planned Parenthood in 2009 after witnessing an abortion herself.)
McClain also mentioned a Feb. 14 article at LifeSiteNews.com featuring an interview with a former Planned Parenthood nurse in Indianapolis. It was headlined, “Former Planned Parenthood worker: ‘It was a money-grubbing, evil, very sad, sad place to work’.”
Although McClain didn’t quote from the article, a Web search at LifeSiteNews.com shows nurse Marianne Anderson saying: “You have to have so many [abortions] a month to stay open. In our meetings they’d tell us, ‘If abortions are down, you could get sent home early and not get as many hours’.”
Also rising to speak, Steve Rich said he was a former board member himself, having served for 12 years. He asked, what’s the “best way to deliver the information?” He said the board could decide only to teach abstinence, but he believed more of an in-between approach is needed.
Rich took a more accommodating view of Planned Parenthood, saying, “Planned Parenthood’s going to be involved in this district whether we want it or not” because some students are going to get pregnant – unless you “hold a gun to everybody’s head” and say not to get pregnant.
“I don’t envy you having to do this at this point,” he said, noting that 20 years ago, LGBTQ material – lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and questioning — wouldn’t even have been on the agenda, but the topic was mentioned this evening.
Audience member Anna Chalmers also noted how times have changed, saying that when she was in high school, treating sexually transmitted diseases “only took a shot in the hip. Today it could kill you.”
Don Hawker said that despite school officials’ references to following a national standard for sexual education, there is no national standard. He added, “Sexual education is a religious matter,” and speaking about establishing a certain school sex-education curriculum violates religious freedom.
“Change the direction of this committee” and don’t get into teaching sex techniques, Hawker said.
Linda Wegener told the officials, “You’re so lucky you have a curriculum” to be exploring. “I had to write my own…
“I never really knew sex education… I congratulate you guys at first asking your students” what they want in the program, Wegener said.
After the session, audience member Jason Walsh, executive director of Arizona Right to Life, told ADI that there seemed to be some uncertainty in the discussion about what a sex-education curriculum would include.
“There are a lot of opinions and nuances with these words, ‘comprehensive and medically accurate’” information, he said. However, Walsh said, Arizona law codifies the matter.
SB 1009, signed into law in April 2012, says:
“A. In view of the state’s strong interest in promoting childbirth and adoption over elective abortion, no school district or charter school in this state may endorse or provide financial or instructional program support to any program that does not present childbirth and adoption as preferred options to elective abortion.
“B. In view of the state’s strong interest in promoting childbirth and adoption over elective abortion, no school district or charter school in this state may allow any presentation during instructional time or furnish any materials to pupils as part of any instruction that does not give preference, encouragement and support to childbirth and adoption as preferred options to elective abortion.”
Another audience member, Christine Accurso, executive director of Phoenix’s First Way Pregnancy Center, told ADI after the meeting, “The real issue here is SB 1009 should be respected.”
She noted references at the meeting to possibly including LGBTQ issues, but that’s “not part of sex education… It doesn’t matter who you are,” the facts of sex education remain the same.
Accurso said the school officials referred various times to what students want in the program, but what about what the parents want?
She said that as a parent herself, if the question is what the child wants, the answer could be, “I’d be eating candy all day.”
As for the comment by the audience member that Planned Parenthood will be involved in the district anyway because students will get pregnant, Accurso said that’s not correct. “We have plenty of pregnancy centers” in the area that aren’t involved with abortion and could help instead, she said.
At least two more meetings of the sex-education curriculum committee for this school year are on the calendar, on March 3 and April 1 at the Tempe History Museum. Check for information at (http://www.boarddocs.com/az/tuhsd/Board.nsf/Public).