A senior fellow for policy studies says the program allowing thousands of girls as young as 14 to receive emergency contraception and other forms of birth control from the New York public schools without parental consent is an infringement on parental rights.
The New York Post has uncovered the fact that this Plan B giveaway program, part of the Reproductive Health Project, is far more extensive than originally thought. Forty separate "school-based health centers" distributed nearly 13,000 doses of the "morning-after pill" during the 2011-2012 school year -- up from 10,720 in 2010-11 and 5,039 in 2009-10. "Handouts … to sexually active students have skyrocketed under an unpublicized project," the exclusive article asserts.
Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council (FRC) sees an obvious need in those numbers.
"This suggests that there is a desperate need for abstinence education in the New York City public schools to explain to young people the dangers of early sexual activity or of sexual activity outside of the context of marriage," he asserts.
And the FRC senior fellow contends that this low-profile program is a flagrant infringement upon parental rights, as minors do not need parental approval to get contraceptives, while "there are laws in some states that won't allow a young person to get their ears pierced or get a tattoo, or maybe even visit a tanning salon without permission from their parents."
According to city officials, more than 6,000 New York girls got pregnant by age 17 last year, and more than half chose to have abortions.
Mona Davids, whose 14-year-old attends a Manhattan high school, tells the Post that she is "in shock." She wonders, "What gives the mayor the right to decide, without adequate notice, to give our children drugs that will impact their bodies and their psyches? He has purposely kept the public and parents in the dark with his agenda."
The school-based health centers run under contract with local hospitals. Davids, who is black, says most of those facilities are located in poor neighborhoods.
Source: OneNewsNow
