Last Friday, Governor Blunt signed a bill that mandates that sex ed teachers provide political affiliations and charitable contribution disclosures to the state in order to prevent any teachers possibly affiliated with any reproductive rights centers or groups from teaching about reproduction. It also prohibits schools from obtaining materials from organizations that normally provide family planning materials.
The White House approved Abstinence Only policy is now the official Missouri directive. This program is well discredited. Yes, it does cause the average age of first sex to increase, by about 3 months. But the incidence of pregnancy and disease from graduates of Abstinence Only is significantly higher within the same age group as survivors of real sex education.
This sex anti-education clause was attached to a bill that requires any office that provides abortions to comply with regulations pertaining to full Emergency Room facilities.
Blunt ceremoniously signed the bill on a cross-shaped podium in a church lobby in front of an audience of church leaders. Talk about keeping church and state separate!
Here’s the Google News round-up on this issue
I don't know if parents ever really gave their kids "the talk", but they certainly don't now. Most parents rely on school sex education programs to go through that whole messy, uncomfortable business of acknowledging that sex exists. Perhaps "rely on" gives the wrong impression; parents assume that schools will cary the brunt of talking about sex, pregnancy, STIs, and the like. When schools fail to do this, most kids go through middle and high school knowing nothing about sex, which leaves them in a minefield of sex-related dangers.
I'm waiting for the next round of legislation, where sex-ed teachers will be required to sign affidavits promising that they will never mention the words "penis" or "vagina" while teaching sex ed. Or, in two more generations, sex ed teachers will be required to prove that they attend church regularly in order to talk about those unmentionable body parts.
The auto-da-fe is alive and well in modern times, evidently. How can this law possibly be constitutional? The state has no power to unilaterally ban people from public positions just because it doesn't like their political affiliations. Let's hope the courts strike this down as quickly as possible…
Other provisions of this law (official summary) include:
and establishing an official Missouri State Pro Life "abortion counseling" service.
In the full bill text the provision prohibiting anyone who may have contributed to Planned Parenthood from teaching sex ed is Section 7. Read it carefully. Unstated: If you have given money to an organization that provides or even mentions abortions, among its many functions, then you are complicit in providing abortions. I doubt that schools will require teachers to disclose their private affiliations. But the potential for abuse is there.
I clicked on one of the news articles and found this choice quote:
For some reason, of all the lies the anti-choice people tell, the one that Planned Parenthood clinics are for-profit "abortion mills" whose doctors are rolling in ill-gotten cash is the one that really sticks in my craw.
Planned Parenthood provides gynecological and other health care to women on a sliding scale so even low-income women can afford regular pap smears and breast exams. How many women's lives have been saved by early detection of cervical cancer at a Planned Parenthood clinic?
The PP clinics in our area also provide general health care to families on Medicaid, and those without insurance on a generous sliding scale. The doctors are very dedicated and are not in it for the money, I assure you. In fact two moms who are doctors at the local PP clinic do the sex-ed unit at my daughter's school. Further proof, if needed,of the fact that there are 2 Americas.
Christian press is busily covering this law, but mainstream news is mostly ignoring it. Why? Look at some of the news reports in the link in the main post (always current).
They talk about trying to cut into the "vast profits" made by "abortion mills". They talk about the heroic churchies passing this ground-breaking (constitution tearing?) legislation.
They report in detail abortion numbers from around the country, making it sound as though Missouri is an abortion leader (nope, about 1,300 in MO of 540,000 annual nationally according to the World).