ARTICLES
March 2003 ARTICLES
Contents © 2003
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Balloons and Bananas
Parents Fight Planned Parenthood in Torrance School District
By Maria Kennedy
Upset by tactics used by Planned Parenthood in presentations to students in the Torrance Unified School district, a group of parents and grandparents are calling upon the school board to cease its relationship with Planned Parenthood.
Pat Arneson is a grandmother who has two grandchildren in the school district. "Planned Parenthood comes into the classrooms to teach sex ed," she said. "They come into the history classes. They made a presentation in a health class and a world history class. They just come in and take over. They only spend five, ten minutes on abstinence," Arneson complained. According to Arneson, one mother said that her daughter had recounted how a Planned Parenthood representative had demonstrated the proper use of a condom with a banana. The mother was upset because she had not been given the opportunity to opt out her daughter, as is required by California state law.
The Planned Parenthood presentations require that students role model different scenarios. During one role modeling scenario, where a young woman was told to pretend that she was pregnant, the young woman told the Planned Parenthood representative, "I don't want an abortion because it hurts. I don't want the kid, so kill it. Just give me a pill." The young woman was then excused from the class.
Other parents have been speaking out at the board meetings. One parent, Laurie Castillo of Torrance, told me that she had become involved because she felt a lack of cooperation from the school board regarding her concerns about Planned Parenthood. "What I have witnessed," she said about the board meetings, "is that it's very difficult to present the information we have from Life Dynamics to them." Life Dynamics is a Texas-based group which has shown how Planned Parenthood routinely disregards child abuse reporting laws when very young girls come into their clinics seeking abortions. "When we gave them a set of questions from Life Dynamics, the answers we received were very vague. I felt that they were covering up, that they have something to hide."
Life Dynamics general counsel Ed Zielinski sent a memorandum to every school district in the county last year cautioning them about the liability of not reporting child sexual abuse. Because, he said, Planned Parenthood routinely ignores child welfare laws, Zielinski noted that school districts may be held liable for any damages that parents may seek if their children are harmed by Planned Parenthood. "Our review of applicable state laws indicates that by allowing family planning services providers into the school district to give presentations, conduct sex education classes, leave materials or accept referrals from district agents. liability may be attenuated to the district for the conduct of the provider. If the girl is injured, killed or sexually assaulted while under the care of a family planning service provider to which she was referred by the school, she, her parents or both may charge the district with negligently referring the girl to the provider."
Mark Crutcher, president of Life Dynamics, said that there was a double standard in how officials handled organizations that abused children. Crutcher noted that while certain Catholic priests have been prosecuted "for forty-year-old cases," no one seems concerned with Planned Parenthood. "It's a double standard," he charged.
At the February 3 board meeting, Nina Lenders, a parent with children in the school district, said that, during the 2001-2002 school year, she had attended two days of Planned Parenthood presentations at South High School in the South Bay. When she addressed the board members, she told them what she had seen during the presentations. "A demonstration of contraceptives came next. A diaphragm and Intra Uterine Devise (IUD) were exhibited to show proper insertion and usage for prevention of pregnancy. After that, details for condom use began. The speaker showed the class how to carefully inspect the air pressure of the condom package to check for leaks and how to place the condom on [a banana] with the reservoir in the right position." With regards to Planned Parenthood's failure to follow mandated reporting laws of unlawful sex with a minor, Lenders told the school board, "my daughter told me that she had never once been instructed by anyone in the Torrance School district that is unlawful to engage in sex as a minor."
Torrance youth minister, Tim Pritchard, pulled his children out of the school district when they allowed Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) into the district. "My biggest concern with the school board is that they don't seem to be concerned with what the parents think," he said.
The meeting, with PFLAG in attendance, was packed with parents who didn't want PFLAG in the school. "I was speaker 37, the meeting didn't end till 11:30 p.m. and they still have the audacity to let them in," said Pritchard. Pritchard noted that the teachers in the district are "teaching politics all day and then send the kids home with their school work. My children were getting three hours of homework every night." Pritchard now home schools his children.
The controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood's presence in the Torrance Unified School district has created friction among the five members of the school board. According to Castillo, board members Maureen O'Donnell, Joe Bonnano and Hedi Ashcroft were accused by Planned Parenthood of secretly meeting without the other two board members, a violation of the state's Brown Act. Castillo said that the accused board members were disturbed by the accusation. "Why would they just take someone's word without confirmation? They were really upset." Castillo said that the students themselves confirmed what Planned Parenthood did in the classrooms. "The kids told the board members about the condoms. the kids told them about what was going on in the classroom."
In her remarks to the school board, Lenders noted that Planned Parenthood was actually encouraging sexual activity by minors. "How is it that [students have] been instructed in learning to use prophylactics and not been fully instructed of all the laws. Planned Parenthood is sending the message to our children that if they want to have sex, they can do it privately, and we will provide services for you, even if it disregards the law."
Torrance Unified School Board president Hedi Ashcraft told this reporter that the issue of Planned Parenthood had first been brought up by Arneson last year. "We are bound by state law to offer sex education," said Ashcraft. What opponents want is to replace the Planned Parenthood program with an abstinence-based program. When asked about the purported violations of the Brown act, Ashcraft vehemently denied ever meeting with any board members outside of the school board chambers. "It's absolutely false and slanderous," she said of the allegations. "It's an out and out lie. The representative from Planned Parenthood slandered our names," she said of the allegations.
Arenson concluded that the bottom line for the parents in the district is their children's' well-being. "We want to get Planned Parenthood out of the district altogether, and we want a decent abstinence program. We want the parents to have the input as to what their children are taught. Our kids don't need this detailed pornography that they are getting in school from Planned Parenthood representatives. They are undermining what the parents are teaching the kids at home."