Parents Pressure Schools to Remove Planned Parenthood Curriculum

Pamphlets are on display inside the waiting room of the Planned Parenthood Golden Gate offices in San Francisco, Calif., on March 29, 2004. (David Paul Morris/Getty Images)

A group of parents in California pressured their children’s school into removing Planned Parenthood from its curriculum—and on June 3, from the entire school district.

MassResistance describes itself as a “pro-family activist organization,” with members in 50 states. The group is known for exposing the Houston Public Library in Texas for permitting a sex offender to participate in the library’s “Drag Queen Storytime” event.

This time—led by Shanda Lobados, the Southern California director of MassResistance—the group admonished the Anaheim School Board for its “so-called sex-ed that is being forced upon junior-high and high-school students,” remarked Arthur Schaper, the group’s organization director.

“The school has sent a very casual flyer regarding the sex education to parents at the beginning of the semester,” said a mother at a school board meeting, whose daughter learned about oral sex from a guest speaker in class. “But the flyer included only brief information without any details.”

Planned Parenthood is known for its controversial sex-ed methods. Fox 13 reported in 2018 that concerned parents criticized their children’s school in Florida for viewing a “sexually-charged” video from the abortion provider. The video was said to help educate students about rape and consent.

Another parent gave an explicit testimony, describing the obscene teachings her sixth grade son learned from a volunteer, according to the article. The school board removed Planned Parenthood curriculum from Lexington Junior High School in Anaheim.

The change, however, was not initially district-wide.

Messages Bounced

During a school board meeting on May 7, Schaper explained that he didn’t understand why the board would eliminate Planned Parenthood in one school, but not the entire district. Secondly, he didn’t under why the board was not receiving his emails, he told The Epoch Times.

“The initial set of emails that I sent to the school board and the assistant, those emails would bounce back or be blocked for some reason,” said Schaper. “One of our team members had suggested that there are certain words that the server picked up on, and then they blocked the email being sent in.”

Another problem MassResistance noted was vague and veiled information about the curriculum. One of the testimonials said that the sex-ed flyer was too brief, and parents who didn’t speak English were even less aware of the contents.

“Moms, dads are not informed in their native language about these programs—many of them don’t even know what LGBT even means,” Schaper said.

In an article by the Los Angeles Times, a lawyer from the Pacific Justice Institute said the sex-ed curriculum by Planned Parenthood is not what people thought it would be: “Now it seems like something that’s pushing kids a certain direction, pushing certain viewpoints, especially with the fusion of gender ideology, gender expression and gender identity.”

Bittersweet Success

Schaper asked for a copy of the sex-ed curriculum on May 17, but was denied the copy because it belonged to a third party, (Planned Parenthood), a response he believes was “absurd.”

However, for the organization, a gleam of success was embedded in their answer: “In response to your question about the removal of Planned Parenthood from District schools, the District schools will not be using Planned Parenthood or its materials moving forward.”

The group’s page states it will continue to press the school district for the curriculum.

His question: How could a school district use a certain sex-ed curriculum and not make it accessible to parents or the public?