Lauren Moye, FISM News
A California school district has indefinitely postponed a vote on a Planned Parenthood partnership that would place clinics directly on high-school campuses.
On Monday night, dozens of protestors and counter-protestors squared off across a street outside the Norwalk-LA Mirada school board meeting. They were only some of the over-hundred people who crashed the planned vote that would have opened a Planned Parenthood clinic at John Glenn High School in Norwalk, California.
Even before the protest, due to rumors of outrage, the school board canceled the vote with a released statement: “The Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District Board of Education will postpone discussion of Board Agenda Item #12a regarding the Planned Parenthood clinic at John Glenn High School. As a result, action will not be taken this evening during the regularly scheduled Board Meeting.”
They added there was no further comment at this time. The vote has not yet been rescheduled.
Even with the canceled vote, the meeting drew a large presence of concerned parents alongside the pro-life protestors. Concerns that the clinics encouraged both abortions and transgender transitioning prompted both.
Nine out of ten students within the school district are minorities, with 79.7% of all students identified as Hispanic/Latino. As Democrats lose popularity with this demographic, some have openly challenged popular left-leaning ideologies. Lexit, a conservative group for Latinos who have exited the Democratic party, demonstrated this with pro-life members present at the school board meeting:
Lexit crew out in Norwalk Ca to protest them trying to put a Planned Parenthood in the high school. Parents were outraged! pic.twitter.com/YNRJpiDCWA
— Lexit (@LexitMovement1) July 19, 2022
While John Glenn High School will not be opening its clinic at this time, it is only one of 50 centers that have been planned in Los Angeles county by the school district according to a 2019 press release. At the time of this statement, five campuses already have a clinic in place in what the county touted as “a landmark” and “first-of-its-kind collaboration” to serve the sexual health needs of teenagers.
The clinics offer STD testing and treatment, physical examinations, and birth control access including long-acting reversible options like IUDs. These clinics do not provide abortions or hormone therapy on-site. However, they do offer referrals to other locations for these services.
Compounding the issue, California law denies parental rights over their teenagers’ medical information. Minors can provide consent for both abortions and birth control. Parents do not need to be notified of either beforehand.
The partnership between the Norwalk-LA Mirada school district and Planned Parenthood takes that an additional step. The clinics will house all medical records. Unless teenagers signs a paper directly giving their parents access right, parents will be completely shut out of their children’s medical history regarding their sexual health.
“Families and taxpayers should be horrified that the Norwalk-La Mirada USD is considering a partnership with Planned Parenthood,” Nicole Neily, the president and founder of non-profit Parents Defending Education, stated to Fox News.