Commentary by Jim Sedlak
For the last week, we here at American Life League have been celebrating the enactment of a law in Missouri that deals, in part, with human sexuality education in schools. The specific wording in the new law that has us in a joyous mood is:
No school district or charter school, or its personnel or agents, shall provide abortion services, or permit a person or entity to offer, sponsor, or furnish in any manner any course materials or instruction relating to human sexuality or sexually transmitted diseases to its students if such person or entity is a provider of abortion services.
These words will block Planned Parenthood from being able to come into Missouri schools with its sex education programs. It cannot even provide its pamphlets or brochures for use in the schools. Thus, this new law shuts off a major means Planned Parenthood uses to get to Missourians’ children.
To understand why this is so important, we need to step back 34 years to 1973, when the Supreme Court decriminalized abortion in this country. On May 3 of that year, Dr. Alan Guttmacher, then president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told the Washington Star: “Then how can the Supreme Court decision be absolutely secured? The answer to winning the battle for elective abortion once and for all is sex education.”
Planned Parenthood has been fighting the abortion battle in the classrooms of this country for more than three decades. To illustrate just how Planned Parenthood uses this forum to promote the abortion agenda, you just have to look at a book that Planned Parenthood pushes all across the country. The book, It’s Perfectly Normal, is intended for children age 10 and up. On page 73 of that book, children are given nine reasons why they should have an abortion-and no reasons not to have an abortion.
We have always maintained that the Planned Parenthood sex education programs are the supply column to the abortion centers. Children learn it is okay to have sex, as long as they use Planned Parenthood’s birth control products to reduce their chances of getting pregnant, and that it’s okay to have abortions when they do get pregnant. As they pass through puberty and their hormones kick in, they begin to act on what they have learned in school. They get involved in sexual activity, buy Planned Parenthood products, get pregnant and have abortions. In fact, Planned Parenthood reports that a majority of those having abortions were using birth control in the month they got pregnant. This is a cycle that frequently repeats itself.
Any measure that cuts off Planned Parenthood’s ability to teach its sex education programs interrupts the supply column and slows down the abortion juggernaut.
But Planned Parenthood’s human sexuality education programs are not just about abortion. They are, in fact, programs specifically designed to bring new customers into Planned Parenthood’s clinics.
The organization has been doing this for many years and it continues because this approach has been most effective in building its business. During the 1985-86 school year, we became aware that Planned Parenthood representatives gave a presentation to a class of seventh graders in the Kingston, New York school district. During the presentation, Planned Parenthood handed out literature on contraceptives, passed samples of contraceptive devices around the classroom, and even showed the children a price list. They pointed out that the devices were cheaper at Planned Parenthood than at local pharmacies.
Permitting a profit-based organization to come into a school and be given access to impressionable students for the purpose of pushing its ideology and its products is a clear conflict. And make no mistake about it, Planned Parenthood, although it is officially a 501-C-3, non-profit organization, makes a profit from the sale of these products to our children.
Just last year, for example, Planned Parenthood reported a profit of $55.8 million. After the incident in the Kingston schools, we began tracking Planned Parenthood’s annual finances. We can tell you that it has made a profit every year since 1987 and its profits over the last 20 years total $705.4 million.
According to Planned Parenthood data, 70 percent of its customers are under the age of 25 ? and 27 percent are under the age of 20. So high school and college girls are Planned Parenthood’s major customers ? exactly the ones who are reached by Planned Parenthood’s sex education programs in the schools.
Allowing Planned Parenthood to come into the schools to teach its comprehensive sex education programs, which stress so-called safer sex practices, is nothing less than allowing a corporate giant to pitch its products to our vulnerable children at our expense. It should never happen.
Parents in the Kingston school district were outraged at the Planned Parenthood presentation and got the organization barred from the schools. This type of action by parents in individual school districts all across the nation has been going on for years. In many places, Planned Parenthood and its programs and literature have been banned from schools. It is always a real battle and some of the major ones are documented in my book, Parent Power.
Now comes the action in Missouri. Here we have a state where the lawmakers clearly recognize the connection between sex education and abortion. They also clearly understand the inherent conflict of interest in having Planned Parenthood hawk its programs and products in schools. Yet in Missouri, elected officials are willing to take a stand to protect all the children in the state.
We applaud the new law in Missouri and hope that similar laws are passed in every state in the nation. We look forward to the day when Planned Parenthood can no longer come into classrooms and prey on our children.
Release issued: 12 Jul 07
