Family Advocate: Bill Uses Calif. Schools as Wedge Between Parents and Kids
by Ed Thomas
April 19, 2005
(AgapePress) - A spokesman for one of California's leading public policy organizations is warning that the state legislature is trying to push through a bill that encourages schools to step between children and their parents' notification rights.Karen England is executive director of the Capital Resource Institute, a grassroots advocacy organization that is promoting a California ballot initiative in favor of parental notification about abortion services being sought by minors. While that ballot initiative is designed to protect both children's health and parents' rights, many opponents of Senate Bill 161, "School Notification to Minors to Seek Medical Services," feel that proposed legislation would do just the opposite.
England says SB 161 was designed to make sure minors age 12 to 17 are given notice that, under California law, they are entitled to receive certain medical services without their parents' permission. The measure strongly exhorts schools to post the notices in age-appropriate language and would also make it mandatory to have the posting on the State Department of Education website.
However, the kind of medical services the bill deals with are all things about which parents would want to be notified, England asserts -- things about which parents should be notified. For example, the legislation would allow minors to receive "Ritalin, psychotropic drugs, abortions, birth-control pills, treatment for STDs," she says, "and we just feel like the schools shouldn't be the place where [school officials] try to encourage these kids to do these things without their parents knowing."
The CRI spokeswoman feels Senate Bill 161 is an attempt to use the public school system to create a wedge between parents and children. She says the legislation "basically encourages the school districts to post this notice in the schools for our kids to read," thereby ensuring that the minors know they can be "emancipated" to receive various kinds of health care without their parents being informed.
Those emancipation rights, according to California law, also ensure young people's access to counseling for suicide, abortion, and drug addiction, and would allow them to access contraceptives as well as other drug prescriptions and even some surgical procedures. But England is warning the citizens of what some pro-family advocates see as a backdoor effort to intrude on parents' rights.
Senate Bill 161 is headed for the California Senate's Judiciary Committee prior to a floor vote. England is urging voters across the state to contact their senators and urge them to vote no on the measure.
Ed Thomas, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
