Arkansas Legislature Passes Bill to Oust Planned Parenthood from Public Schools

Ever wonder why the abortion seller Planned Parenthood is one of the nation’s largest providers of sex education materials to the nation’s schools? Because it’s good for business, and one state has had enough of that. The Arkansas state legislature recently passed HB 1592, the Student Protection Act, which will bar the state’s public schools from entering into any transactions with any entity or person that provides, induces or performs abortions.

Why is the bill necessary?

The Family Council is a Focus on the Family-affiliated organization headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, that promotes family values in the Natural State. Jerry Cox is Family Council’s president. The Daily Citizen asked Cox about the bill.

“Family Council fully supports this good bill,” Cox told us in an email. “We have worked for 30 years to ensure Arkansas’ public schools promote abstinence education, because that’s what has proven to work the best when it comes to reducing teen birth rates and teen abortion rates in Arkansas. Our state shouldn’t give abortionists a free platform to use to promote themselves and their work to our public-school students.”

How deeply are abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood embedded in Arkansas’ public schools?

Recently, Family Council sent a Freedom of Information Act request to one of the state’s school districts, Pulaski County Special School District, to inquire as to just how much business the district conducted with abortion providers.

The response was startling.

According to Cox, the district sent Family Council “1,395 pages of redacted email correspondences, attachments, and other documents revealing that Planned Parenthood has been active in multiple central Arkansas public schools over the past several years.”

Planned Parenthood brags that it “is the single largest provider of sex education in the United States, reaching 1.5 million people with education and outreach each year.”

So, what’s wrong with that?

“These sex education programs give abortion providers like Planned Parenthood a platform in our public schools,” Cox said. “They give abortion providers access to our children. That should trouble every pro-life parent. There are better sex education curricula available than the ones that Planned Parenthood offers. Parents should expect their schools to choose the best curriculum available rather than the ones offered by abortionists.”

Planned Parenthood’s sex ed material would shock most parents.

In Massachusetts, for example, Planned Parenthood’s sex ed materials teach 12-year-olds about anal sex, among other inappropriate behaviors. The abortion seller promotes its materials by claiming they help reduce the incidences of sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy rates among teens. But studies show that it doesn’t live up to the hype.

As one sex educator trained by Planned Parenthood said in a 2019 op-ed for the Washington Examiner, “This type of sex education does not protect our youth. It only serves to encourage them to explore all sexual activities and places a burden on them that they are not prepared to bear. Will Planned Parenthood continue to educate our youth about sex? Of course, they’ll try. Planned Parenthood and other like-minded organizations have been collaborating for years to establish illicit sex education in our schools and communities. Remember, it’s big money for them.

“It’s the perfect business plan for a lifelong customer,” she wrote.

The Arkansas bill may be a first of its kind, although Texas passed a law in 2019, HB 22, that accomplishes much the same thing by prohibiting taxpayer funds from going to abortionists for any reason.

The Arkansas bill now heads to the governor’s desk for signature. Cox is optimistic. “Governor Hutchinson has been diligent to sign every pro-life bill that has come across his desk. We fully expect him to sign this one as well.”

Photo from Mike Reddington / Shutterstock.com