|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Anti-abortion
Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPC's)
|
|
|
Introduction
|
|
| Date: October 20,
2003 |
|
| To: Poudre School
District |
|
| From: |
Peggy Loonan
Executive Director
Life and Liberty for Women
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Life
and Liberty for Women is a 501 c 3 non-profit
abortion rights education organization based in
Fort Collins. We believe that the reduction of the
number of abortions performed in this country is
a function of reducing unintended pregnancies not
by again criminalizing abortion. We are advocates
of safe legal abortion. |
|
| Life
and Liberty for Women are advocates of an
abstinence-based age appropriate comprehensive sex
education and STD/HIV curriculum, believing it to
be the best approach to educating our children in
the public school system about the need and importance
of remaining abstinent until they are in an adult
committed relationship and protecting themselves
from an unintended pregnancy and the transmission
of HIV/AIDS and other STDS should they become sexually
active as a teenager or not until adulthood. |
|
| Life
and Liberty for Women advocates the provision
of proven scientifically accurate information regarding
pregnancy prevention, STDS, and HIV/AIDS prevention
in a public school sex education curriculum. |
|
|
| Life
and Liberty for Women are advocates for a
sex education curriculum that addresses negotiation
skills for navigating within a relationship, a curriculum
that helps students build a healthy self-esteem,
helps them deal with intense peer pressure to be
sexually active as teens, and provides information
and help to students and parents in forging good
communicative relationships with one another about
issues surrounding sex. |
|
| Life
and Liberty for Women are advocates for a
sex education curriculum that provides help for
teens in developing refusal skills and the communicative
skills to talk to a partner about sex, HIV/STDS
and pregnancy prevention should they choose to become
sexually active. We advocate providing students
with information about where and how to obtain STD/HIV
testing and contraceptives. |
|
| I am also mother of
two daughters in the Poudre School District
- ages 17 and 13 at Rocky Mountain High School and
Blevins Junior High respectively. |
|
|
|
|
"The Alpha Center is an anti-abortion anti-birth
control Christian-based organization known as a Crisis Pregnancy
Center or CPC and is located in Fort Collins.
My ten-plus years as a reproductive health care rights activist
as well as my
familiarity with and understanding of the Alpha Center's philosophical
and
religious beliefs and bias is a major asset to an investigative
critique of the
curriculum they presented to our children in the Poudre School
District.
|
|
| REGARDING: This
report concerns the results of my evaluation of
The Alpha Pregnancy Resource Center's abstinence-only
till marriage HIV/STD sex education curriculum presentations
in Poudre School District Schools in Fort Collins,
Colorado during the 2002-2003 school year and during
the 2001-2002 school year in my daughter's high
school health class. |
|
| The Alpha Center is an
anti-abortion anti-birth control Christian-based
organization known as a Crisis Pregnancy Center
or CPC and is located in Fort Collins. |
|
| I visited Alpha Center's
abstinence only till marriage and STD/HIV/AIDS presentations
in February 2003 at Rocky Mountain High School,
in March 2003 at Poudre High School, and in May
2003 at both Lincoln and Lesher Junior Highs. I
was also present during the Alpha Center's abstinence-only
till marriage presentation in my oldest daughter's
high school health class at Rocky Mountain High
School during the 2001-2002 school year. And I was
present during the Alpha Center's abstinence-only
and STD/HIV presentation in my oldest daughter's
ninth grade health class at Blevins Junior High
during the 2000-2001 school year. |
|
|
| My ten-plus years as a
reproductive health care rights activist as well
as my familiarity with and understanding of the
Alpha Center's philosophical and religious beliefs
and bias is a major asset to an investigative critique
of the curriculum they presented to our children
in the Poudre School District. It allows me a very
different perspective of the Alpha Center's abstinence-only
till marriage sex education and STD curriculum than
that of many Poudre School District administrators
and teachers especially those administrators and
teachers who are truly unfamiliar with the Alpha
Center's political and religious ideology and agenda
or who may share the Alpha Center's religious and
or philosophical beliefs that abstinence-only until
marriage is the only option teenagers should be
presented with. |
|
| Thus, my critique of the
presentations I was able to observe in the second
semester of this past school year, 2002-2003, by
the Alpha Center is presented from the view point
of a parent very concerned with the accuracy of
the sex education and HIV/STD curriculum her children
are exposed to and the view point of an organization
in the community that advocates for a sound proven
and scientifically accurate abstinence-based comprehensive
sex education STD/HIV curriculum. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
