Catholic Family Vignettes

The community of Portland Maine will be taking a vote tomorrow evening to approve making available oral contraception and other "reproductive services" to 6th grade students.

Richard Veilleux, Executive Director of the Portland Maine Assembly on School Based Health, states: "It's really about giving kids the services they need to keep them safe and healthy and in school..."

(I think we can safely read that as: "It's really about keeping attendance up so we don't lose our funding")

He further states: "There are young kids who will be having sex unsafely and it's important that the community be able to decide to keep these kids safe."

(I think most parents are currently laboring under the delusion that it is their right and responsibility to keep their children safe...not the community. This is more of the faulty "it takes a village to raise a child" mentality!)

Charmaine Yoest of the Family Research Council believes this is nothing more than "greenlighting" sexual behavior amongst children and states: "This is a perfect example of the soft bigotry of low expectations." Additional statements from Yoest regarding the upcoming vote in Portland: "This is exactly the wrong response." "To respond with contraception to curb teen sexuality is tragic." "This policy is a cleverly written fig-leaf to circumvent parental involvement in their children's life."

This School Based Health plan would allow children to seek services confidentially. Parents will sign an initial consent form to enable their child to obtain school health services. Remember when we all went to the school nurse for a band-aid? Now "reproductive health" is on the list of services offered. Once the parents sign giving their consent, students may obtain all services confidentially.

View the CNN video here.

Protecting children, indeed! Seems the average child is in desperate need of protection from programs like the one being considered in Portland, Maine.