A 12-year-old girl is prohibited from bringing aspirin to California public schools without a note from her mother or father – but in many California districts she may sign herself out of classes, leave her junior-high campus without parental permission, secretly have an abortion and return to school before the end of the day and her own family may be none the wiser.
Parents and educators across the state have been in heated debate over school policies allowing children to be excused during class time without parental notification for “confidential medical services” such as abortions, birth control, and drug and mental health services.
They were debating changing the current policy to reflect school administrators’ interpretation of California Education Code 4601.1, which states:
Commencing in the fall of the 1986-87 academic year, the governing board of each school district shall, each academic year, notify pupils in grades 7 to 12, inclusive, and the parents or guardians of all pupils enrolled in the districts, that school authorities may excuse any pupil from the school for the purpose of obtaining confidential medical services without the consent of the pupil’s parent or guardian.
Pacific Justice Institute staff attorney Matt McReynolds told WND the statute is ambiguous and only says the districts may dismiss students, not that they are required to do so.
“If you use general principles of statutory construction, as we lawyers do in interpreting these things, ‘may’ is very different than ‘must,’” he said. “It doesn’t say they must dismiss them, which is how the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and the National Youth Law Center interpret it. It is a district-by-district decision on whether they will tell parents.”
“They can’t drive themselves anywhere, so some adult or somebody with a driver’s license would have to get them to those so-called ‘confidential’ medical appointments that aren’t so ‘confidential’ after all when you really think about it,” he said. “You’re talking about an older boyfriend, a boyfriend’s parents, maybe even a school official? Somebody has to get them there [and back] when they’re that young.”
McReynolds argues that hiding medical issues from parents may endanger the health and well being of a child [But the students belongs to the State and apparently that is none of the parents business].
”A parent who is 100 percent legally and morally responsible for taking care of their minor child may have no real ability to do so if they don’t know that their child just had a major medical procedure,” he said. “Or in the case of counseling, they may have no idea their child is dealing with substance abuse or suicidal thoughts or any number of other things.”
First, I don’t think schools should be in the business of facilitating abortions, especially for minors. They should NOT be in the business of deceiving parents - ever.
In California confidentiality is so bad that even teachers being told by other teachers about life threatening problems of a child can face criminal charges.
I also must ask if this 12-year-old gets an abortion with the help of the school and without parental consent, if there are medical or mental complications following the abortion, who pays these costs? Why the parent, they never approved of the procedure? Then who? Well, probably old sucker taxpayers, making us accomplices to the abortion.