A New York-based family advocate says making emergency contraceptives available free of charge to high school girls in the Big Apple is just another "end-run" around parental rights that ignores spiritual and emotional concerns.
Plan B, the "morning-after" pill, can be obtained at 13 high schools without parental consent ( see earlier story). The New York City Department of Education says parents can opt their daughters out of the pilot program -- but that the program is needed to reduce teen pregnancy and unwanted pregnancies.
"The truth is, if parents had to be asked before Plan B was given to a girl ... probably in most of those instances the girl is going to say Don't call my parents. That's just a fact ...," said City Council speaker Christine Quinn. "And putting [parental consent] in would render the program just de facto useless. We need to get this information and Plan B to girls who need it."
Jason McGuire of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms tells OneNewsNow it is shocking how the schools are undermining parental rights and responding to promiscuity with contraception.
"It's much more than that. There are spiritual concerns; there are emotional concerns," he tells OneNewsNow. "Parents should be involved in this conversation -- and I am afraid that the bottom line message we're sending is, Hey, it's okay if you just practice safe sex. But the bottom line is that it is not safe sex -- it is a dangerous behavior that no child under age 17 can legally consent to in New York."
McGuire notes that parents were supposedly notified and given the chance to opt their children out of the tax-funded pilot program. He discounts those reports.
"Reports are that only one to two percent of the parents said they do not want their children to receive this. I would estimate that many parents did not even receive the notice to begin with," he states. "Additionally, even when parents said that they do not want their children to receive this kind of Plan B and morning-after pills, [students] can still go to private institutions connected to the schools and get these -- so it seems like another end-run around parental rights."
According to McGuire, New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms is considering strategy to combat the situation -- but he adds: "We have some arrogant people in the administration who are not going to be moved very easily on this topic."