Planned Parenthood Preys On High Schools
Planned Parenthood will open "reproductive health centers" in a total of 50 Los Angeles County high schools in 2020. The clinics claim to offer all types of birth control, including emergency contraceptives, screenings for STDs, pregnancy testing, and pregnancy counseling, all at the expense of Los Angeles County taxpayers and Planned Parenthood. According to the Washington Post, the county's health department will pay $10 million of the bill over three years, with Planned Parenthood paying $6 million. Thirty-four sites are already open, with Planned Parenthood operating five of these and intending to eventually take over all of them.
Because California law allows minors over the age of 12 to access birth control and other treatment without parental consent, children as young as 13 can obtain potentially dangerous contraceptives such as Plan B. The Los Angeles Times described one of the centers as a place where students are "greeted by cute stuffed sloths, with a soft blanket on comfy chairs that are pushed together to resemble a sofa. Signs in the room promise a safe space and an explanation of what defines sexual consent: 'Freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic, specific.'"
The centers are billed as targeting primarily "at risk" youth, and are staffed 20 hours per week. The Washington Post said the effort "is believed to be the most ambitious in the country."
The program includes indoctrinating teens as "peer advocates" to help "provide information about safe sex and relationships," because as one Planned Parenthood trainer observed, "Teens listen to other teens."
Health educator Billie Dawn Greenblatt told the Los Angeles Times that the clinics will "offer the students another set of caring adults to whom they can come with those strange life questions," which means rather than going to their parents. And parents are understandably livid about this gross intrusion into their children's public schools.
A variety of conservative and pro-family organizations are speaking out in opposition. The Washington Post, for example, quoted Sister Paula Vandegaer, head of Volunteers for Life, as being against the initiative because it "pushes sexuality beyond where they should without reference to families." She added: I am against them being in the schools. They all have school nurses, and there's no need for Planned Parenthood to co-opt the normal program for health in the school. The Susan B. Anthony List's Vice President of Communications, Mallory Quigley, was more direct when she said: It's abhorrent that a taxpayer-funded public-school system would let the nation's largest abortion business set up centers within its schools... They've done everything in their power to take the humanity out of the unborn child while normalizing the barbaric procedure and hiding behind euphemisms like 'women's rights' and 'pro-choice.' Now they want to create a direct network to the next generation right in America's high schools.
Writing in the opinion section of the Washington Examiner, contributor Kate Hardiman pointed out that Planned Parenthood's new clinic program "builds upon the controversial sex education framework California forced into its public schools in April [2019]." She noted that students "can walk into the clinics anytime—including during class."
Hardiman and many pro-life advocates call the new centers "thinly veiled efforts to drive more business to Planned Parenthood's abortion-providing clinics." They accuse the abortion giant of "promoting and selling abortions to vulnerable teenage girls."
Hardiman warns that parents in California and across the nation should be alarmed both by "Planned Parenthood's latest effort to usurp their authority as the primary educators of their children, and the Los Angeles school system's acquiescence."
Such behavior in many school districts reflects the relentless march of the progressive agenda, which many fear will increasingly infiltrate public schools, until parents finally face having to leave the system or forfeit their rights altogether.
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