Abortion Industry Wants $1 Million To Teach CT Teens About Sex
February 27th, 2008 by Peter
Planned Parenthood has held two recent events to promote a bill that would offer $1 million in incentive grants for school districts to offer increased comprehensive sex ed to teens. (The vaguely written bill, which will receive a public hearing on Friday, is here. A similar bill, which will be heard on Monday, can be viewed here.) Mary Ann Sprague of the CT chapter of Stop Planned Parenthood has sent us this report of the first event, held two weeks ago in New Haven:
Last Thursday, on the green in New Haven, on the corner of Elm and Temple streets, where all the city’s high schoolers get off and on the busses transferring to other busses, student volunteers, who are trained peer educators for PPC, called STARS, handed out condom “valentines” stating, ‘a must have fashion accessory, proper attire: required for entry,’ and waving banners that said ‘Honk if your safe,’ ‘Real sex ed saves lives,’ and ‘Teens deserve real facts,’ that call for more sex reports and condoms in sex education in public school ‘comprehensive health.’ Gretchen Raffa, a PPC community organizer asked teens not to share their last names and said, “Teens deserve information to keep them healthy and safe, and help them make responsible choices.” PPC’s agenda is to subtly remind teens, their future clients, that when the birth control fails surgical abortion is also considered ‘responsible parenting,’ as opposed to the positive adoption message in Eduardo Verastegui’s movie ‘Bella.’
PPC’s organized the event to raise awareness of The Act Concerning Healthy Teens, a bill introduced to the General Assembly Friday that would offer $1 million in incentive grants for school districts to offer increased comprehensive sex ed to teens. This means increased access to biased Alan Guttmacher sex reports and increased access to condoms in grades 6, 7, 8, and 11 comprehensive health.
This aggressive move by PPC is in response to pro-abort, radical Gov. Rell’s refusal to sign for the Federal $345,000.00 abstinence-only funds in the states 2008-2013 budget and under the same state’s matching abstinence-only funds under the Department of Public Health’s grants.
I was present at the second event, a press conference held last week at the LOB by Planned Parenthood and AIDS activists. They said kids are not getting “the information they need” regarding sex and that this bill would somehow fix that. Several students spoke for the bill, saying that lack of facts leads to pregnancy and disease. “You have no right to withhold information from me that would allow me to protect myself,” said one.
One activist spoke of a program that has high school kids teaching 5th graders, which she says supplements the schools’ sex-ed program. She said that “comprehensive sex ed” should start early and continue through high school. She added that state guidelines require 80 hours per year of “health” for grades 5-12 and complained that Hartford’s middle schools were providing less.
One teenager, Zach, described himself as a “Planned Parenthood peer educator”—he apparently teaches at a regional high school in Woodbridge in association with the nation’s largest abortion provider. “As much as I enjoy answering my friends’ questions about sexual health,” said Zach—and a proponent of the bill sitting next to me started to laugh, until she realized Zach was not joking—”I can’t be everywhere.” And that is why he wants the bill passed. Spreading the abortionist-approved view of “sexual health” to his fellow teens is too big a job for any one “peer educator.”
The superintendent of schools in New London spoke strongly in favor of the bill, saying that he was “committed to opening the curtain of taboos” and that he would “fight back” and “push hard” against “fear” and “resistance.”
Rita Whitehead, a community organizer in New London, claimed that “99%” of parents in her town “want their kids to have comprehensive sex ed in the schools.” Which begs the question: If this is true, why don’t they just mandate it through their local board of ed? Why force the state to pay for what “99%” of New London parents supposedly want? One suspects that Ms. Whitehead is ever-so-slightly exaggerating New London’s support for this bill. “We will be targeting middle and high schools” she said. “Targeting” is indeed the right word for what they would be doing.
They saved the best for last, though—a totally over-the-top AIDS activist. “It amazes me that we have to fight for the right to be healthy,” he began. He said that kids cut themselves and kill themselves if the ones they love do not give them sexual education. He attacked the Church, saying that “no one tells you anything [on sex ed] because they want to protect their own point of view.” It is because of this, claimed the speaker, that people like him end up with AIDS as a result.
So children cut themselves and even kill themselves because their parents never discussed sex with them. And the last speaker got AIDS because the Church didn’t tell him about sex. These are the sort of press conferences at the legislative office building that you probably will not be reading about in the Hartford Courant.
Indeed, there were hardly any media at the press conference, and that may have been intentional—the thought of giving a million dollars to these folks to teach sex ed to our teenagers would surely have concerned the state if they saw what I saw. Running “comprehensive” sex ed through the state’s largest abortion provider is also sure to give pause to many.
The first bill will be heard by the education committee on Friday and the second one by public health on Monday. Watch your in-boxes for information on how to stop these bills.
Prayer to St. Joseph
St. Joseph, you are the chaste and loving spouse of the Virgin Mary, the foster father of Jesus, the protector and provider of the Holy Family and all families. We have complete confidence in your loving care for new life and in your fidelity to the family. We commend our efforts to your prayers and protection. Help us to defend the gift of human life that it may grow to the abundance of eternal life promised and bestowed on us by your son, our brother, Jesus Christ. Amen.
(From Human Life International)
Prayer for Respect of Life
St. Gerard Majella, women the world over have adopted you as their patron in the joys and fears of childbearing. Today we invoke your intercession for the pro-life movement. Pray that all will look upon human life as a gift from God, not as an unwanted burden to be destroyed. Assist the efforts of those on earth who are enlisted in the crusade of promoting the dignity of human life, particularly the unborn. This we ask through Christ our Lord. Amen.
(From The League of St. Gerard/ The Redemptorists)
Prayer to end Abortion
Lord God, I thank you today for the gift of my life and for the lives of all my brothers and sisters. I know there is nothing that destroys more life than abortion, yet I rejoice that you have conquered death by the Resurrection of Your Son. I am ready to do my part in ending abortion. Today I commit myself never to be silent, never to be passive, never to be forgetful of the unborn. I commit myself to be active in the pro-life movement, and never to stop defending life until all my brothers and sisters are protected, and our nation once again becomes a nation with liberty and justice not just for some, but for all, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
(From Father Frank Pavone of Priests For Life)
A Prayer for Life
Loving God, Creator of all, we recognize that life is a gift from you. Open our hearts to Your Holy Spirit and renew in us a deep respect for all persons: the family, the unborn, the young, the adult, the sick, the disabled, the abused, the imprisoned, the aged, the dying, the homeless, the unemployed, and the oppressed in any way.
Bless all of us in the Diocese of (name) and instill in us a deep love for Your gift of life.
Through the intercession of Mary, Mother and Virgin, may all our words and actions foster reverence for human life.
May we be witness to the truth that all life is precious and has sublime dignity. Lead our nation and our world to this understanding so that we may be a people dedicated to the protection of all Your sons and daughters.
We ask this through Your Son, Jesus Christ, the Word Who became flesh and lived among us.
Amen.
(Sacredness of Life Committee/ Diocese of Norwich)
Memorare (in time of need)
Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother. To thee I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy, hear and answer me. Amen.
(From Human Life International)
Ive already contacted the Education Committee about the raised Bill 5591. Here is a link to their contact information: http://www.cga.ct.gov/ED/ContactInfo2007.pdf
Please contact the Public Health Committee to oppose Raised Bill 461 to teach comprehensive sex ed especially if the money would go to Planned Parenthood!Thanks! Every voice counts.
Public Health Committee
http://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/menu/MemberList.asp?comm_code=PH&doc_type=
As a high school junior in 1982 I sat through the beginnings of this sex education movement in a required co-ed health seminar where they taught us the ins and outs of the various contraceptives available on the market and told us how to get them. There was one problem with their marketing. They quoted statistics which said that 80% of high school students are sexually active, and so their “education” dealt with how to “do what everyone else is doing and not get caught”.
I had been trained at home and at church that sex should be saved for marriage, and I resented the fact that this “education seminar” sent the message that I was a weirdo and my values were old fashioned and I should get with the program and do what everyone else was doing. To those kids who may have been wavering, the message presented was that it was okay to have sex, everyone was doing it, and that it was normal and healthy. Never did they present any message about abstinence. To the students who didn’t have the same values being taught to them at home, this message told them they had better go out and find a boyfriend / girlfriend to try it out if they wanted to be like everyone else.
I am a firm believer in abstinence before marriage as the way to increase happiness within marriage and increased commitment to family life.
I had “health ed” in 5th grade and although we required parental permission in our district, I was glad my mother allowed me to participate. It allowed us a starting point for conversation on the topic of normal development.
In 9th grade, 3 out of 4 of my circle of friends were sexually active to some extent. I believe education is vitally necessary, and unfortunately not all parents are aware enough of what is happening to their children when they walk out of their homes to know when it’s time for “the talk.”
I am pro-sex ed 100%. If you don’t like it, then find a way for your kids to opt out, but don’t deny it to those who need it and won’t get it anywhere else.
As a parent, what I find objectionable in present-day “sex education” programs within our schools is the element of indoctrination. If the curriculum remained focused exclusively on factual matters such as human anatomy, without attempting to inculcate values of moral relativism in our children, then it would be serving its proper educational role as it once did before the 1960s.
The problem, of course, is that modern “sex ed” programs are designed as tools of propaganda. As described by Dr. Mary Calderone, former medical director of Planned Parenthood, first president of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the US (SIECUS) and the architect of modern sex education, today’s programs are designed to enable the schools to “pry children away from old views and values, especially from biblical and other traditional forms of sexual morality.”
And what has this so-called innovation provided in terms of results, during the past 4 decades? Epidemic rates of STDs among teens, out-of-wedlock teen pregnancies, and psychological trauma. An explosion in teenage sexuality and promiscuity, inspired by an “anything goes” attitude that is rooted in new beliefs – that supreme moral authority resides in one’s own personal choice, and that this freedom trumps any absolute moral standards based on societal norms or traditions. And once you’ve peeled away the outward signs of moral decay, at its heart this brainwashing all comes down to a belief that there is no absolute standard of “right and wrong”, and that each person can define for themselves what is “right and wrong” as they see fit. In this death spiral towards moral chaos, our children are being misled to set aside the wisdom of past generations, through which our previous moral standards were developed for the collective good.
Moreover, the damage being done to society by programs such as these leads to much suffering. Children born of children, who are then raised without the support of both a mother and a father. An increased financial burden on the rest of society, as we cope with the impact to public health and welfare. A dysfunctional society that can no longer compete effectively with the rest of the world. And we wonder why our children are falling behind relative to educational standards of accomplishment. Perhaps if the schools would focus the more of their energy on teaching, and less on attempting to sway hearts and minds, some of this damage could be reversed.
For those looking for a better way to introduce their kids to “the birds and the bees” – in order to pre-empt the messages being given in our public schools, and to address the subject in a way consistent with traditional family values – I want to recommend the following resource:
“Passport2purity” by Dennis Rainey and Barbara Rainey. The new edition (2006) includes a parent’s guidebook, a child’s workbook, and a series of lessons on Audio CDs. The older edition is titled “Passport to Purity” (1999), and includes Audio Cassettes instead of CDs.
The concept is to take your child on a weekend getaway that represents a significant and memorable event, recognizing the importance of their maturing into a young adult. It’s much more than “sex ed”. It covers a range of topics including: peer-pressure, puberty, purity and dating. The object lessons that go with each topic are tangible, vivid and lasting reminders of the material. Having a structured program also helps to defuse the parental anxiety you may feel in approaching this subject. It is age-appropriate for pre-teens, and provides them with a firm foundation to help withstand the misleading messages they may receive from outside forces during their teenage years.