Media Reports on Sex-Ed Controversy
March 5th, 2008 by Peter
Hearings have been held on the two controversial Planned Parenthood-backed sex-ed bills that I blogged about last week. From the New Haven Register:
Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, testified against the bill at a public hearing Monday, and also had concerns about New Haven’s teen pregnancy plan.
“What we favor is abstinence-only education. It doesn’t make sense to educate them on abstinence, and say if you choose not to go that route, here’s how to have sex. That actually encourages them,” he said.
From the Courant, regarding the first–quite heated–hearing on Friday:
Opponents of the bill met with skepticism from legislators.
Theresa Krankowski, director of St. Gerard’s Center for Life, a Catholic pregnancy center in Hartford, said comprehensive sex education was fundamentally incompatible with abstinence, which she said should be taught instead. Krankowski, who holds a doctorate in education, called teaching children about both condoms and abstinence “educationally unsound.”
But state Rep. Jason W. Bartlett, D-Bethel, said Krankowski was effectively suggesting that too much information can lead to bad behavior, and he noted that teens can also get information from the Internet. “Should I be submitting legislation that we not allow children to access the Internet because there’s too much information there?” he asked.
“Because teens have access to unhealthy things on the Internet, we should expose them to unhealthy things in the public schools. The only alternative is to ban the Internet.” Yes, the arguments from legislators supporting this bill were actually that lame–and worse.
More:
Another opponent, Valeria Barbier, a 20-year-old Trinity College student, said the bill could lead to teaching children about sex too early.
Barbier focused much of her testimony on Planned Parenthood’s support for the bill, and warned that the organization was attempting to drive up its “business” providing abortions by introducing younger children to topics like oral sex and masturbation. “They know condoms break, and they know that girls forget to take contraception regularly,” she said.
Ironically, the same hearing which saw legislators defending the nation’s largest provider of abortions also heard testimony on a bill that would create an educational program focused on genocide awareness. To the surprise of no one, the irony was lost on the Committee.
Attention Stoppers,
I’m Mary Anne Sprague the Stopp Planned Parenthood of Connecticut Representative.
This is basicly my three minute testimoney against the recent Department of Public Health hearing on (Raised) bill H. B. No. 5591, Friday, 02/29/08, An Act Concerning Teenage Pregnancy. I’m sorry I didn’t know about the Education Committee hearing on (Raised) bill H. B. No. 5591 An Act concerning Healthy Teens in time.
Our radical Govenor Rell’s refusal to sign for federal absinence-only funding, for fiscal years 2008-2012, is a red flag for Planned Parenthood of Connecticut’s Public Relations Director of Communication, Susan Yolen, to get her foot in the door for more state grant money from the DPH. (Not one public school in Connecticut chose the otional abstinece-only curriculum with the federal and state matching abstinence-only grant fund.)
PPC is targeting our minor youth in the public school comprehensive health as future clients and their agenda is to increase awareness as to how to access their family planning clinics for yet even more contaceptives.
There is mandated Parental Notification in the public school middle and high school Human Sexuality and HIV portions of comprehensive health but the parents do not know about it. When a student is allowed to walk into these classes their parents loose their parental rights and their student fills out graphic questionaires and may be driven to PPC for contraception, and when the birth control fails, an abortion, without the parents knoledge.
The DPH offers a free, comprehensive health Theater presentation, under the Department of Education’s parental notification requirements, on the local level.
One of the requirements of this additional grant funding from the DPH on the local level would be for the health teacher to only teach PPC approved comprehensive health.
I know my middle school health teacher in Redion 14 would apply for the money from this grant if available and this would only increase access to PPC’s pornographic ‘teenwire’ web site, increase access to Allan Guttmacker Institute’s pro-choice bias ‘sex reports’ (state abortion statistics data,) increase access to PPC family planning clinics for contraceptives and when the contraceptives fail, increase the abotion rate in Bethlehem/Woodbury school district.
In an article in the Bridgeport, Connecticut, Post on 01/20/08, Susan Yolen stated, ‘The (abortion rate) trend in Connecticut has been mostly downward from the national average.’ This is a perfect example of PPC’s fraudulent information to public school students. According to the DPH’s abortion statistics since 2000 Connecticut shows a 12% increase rate. The AGI’s data shows that in 2005, Connecticut has a 4.2% higher increase abortion rate from the national average and a 62% higher access rate to surgical abortion family planning clinics than the national average. This reveals that when the contraceptives fail, abortion rates per 1000 women are much higher in states like Connecticut with increased access to family planning clinics. (A public school student can can literally fall out of bed into a family planning clinic in the state Connecticut) and even Susan Yolen brags about Connecticut as being the “Home of Planned Prenthood.”) AGI reveals that states with “better access” to family planning clinics have higher abortion rates compared to states that AGI criticizes for “poor” access to family planning clinics.
Decreasing the abortion rate occurs because of increased parental involvement and abstinence education. It’s not abstinence till college, it’s abstinence till marraige.
Let’s keep PPC away from our children and money.
I encourage you to vote no against anymore taxpayer dollars going to fund enhanced comprehensive health on a state level coming from the DPH.
I hope these bills ARE “dead.” (Update, Peter?)
I read a very telling update from familyleader.net (yesterday) titled “Crushing Abstinence.” Here are a few excerpts:
“seeking to defund abstinence education would be a hard sell to the American public-and it is-if the facts are laid out fairly. Thus advocates of yanking abstinence education turn to campaigns of deception to further their cause.
“They claim for example, that the alternative, comprehensive sex education, is really just an abstinence plus program, that it teaches kids abstinence, plus additionally the importance of condom use for the sexually active. They give it a friendly name which entirely disguises the content and intent.”
“The Heritage Foundation did a study of comprehensive sex education vs. authentic abstinence programs and found that…**comprehensive sex-education devotes only 4.7% of their page content to the topic of abstinence and zero percent to healthy relationship and marriage.”**
“Beyond that, **comprehensive sex-ed courses give no clear encouragement for teens to delay sex-in fact, quite the opposite.** The message is that it is OK for teens to have sex as long as they use contraceptives.”
“Last week in Congress, Rep. Waxman, held a committee hearing on abstinence education, and the deck was stacked from the beginning with eight advocates seeking to crush abstinence education against one.”
“What Dr. Weed told the committee, is that, critics of abstinence really fall into two camps: One camp would abandon abstinence education as a strategy and policy because they think it can’t work. Their primary concern is effectiveness. Dr. Weed has the evidence to quiet that concern.
“But the second group of critics really use the effectiveness argument to hide something else. They oppose abstinence education because it goes against their core value system. **”They believe that our society ought to be more free and open about sex, overcome our inhibitions and simply enjoy the pleasures of physical intimacy regardless of age or marital status.”**
“In a telling moment at the hearing, Rep. Virginia Foxx asked the panelists if they would support optional federal funding for abstinence education if these programs were shown to be as beneficial as or more beneficial than comprehensive sex education, and 5 of the 7 panelists answered, “no.” Ah, ha. The masks were down for a moment. **They were there in the guise of concern about the effectiveness of abstinence, but in reality they are ideologues who think our teenagers should be free to have sex.** Watch this revealing moment by linking here:”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM_G3YIL0dk
As one youtube viewer posted in response:
“This shows that the goal isn’t safety or less teen pregnancy, but indoctrination.”
It is not pc to say this (but I will)—that Satan surely has many ‘highly educated’ “experts” helping him in his mission to destroy the lives of our youth, through promoting early and promiscuous sex, as well as drinking, using drugs, etc.