Roundup: Massachusetts Parents Fight Availability of Birth Control for High School Students

Aug 24, 2009, 11:07am

Amy Dempsey

Massachusetts Parents Fight Availability of Birth Control for High School Students; Anti-Abortion Actvitist Starts Tour in Roanoke; More Protests at Florida Planned Parenthood

Massachusetts Parents Fight Availability of Birth Control for High School Students
A
group of parents in Revere, Massachusetts, is fighting a proposed
policy change that would make contraceptives including Plan B available
to high school students, according to the Boston Globe.
The policy, approved by the School Committee, would enable students
visiting the Massachusetts General Hospital’s school-based clinic at
Revere High School to obtain contraceptives at the clinic if they
receive their parents’ permission, the article said.
Many others support the policy, including school superintendent Paul Dakin.
He told the Boston Globe:

"It is separate and distinct from
our school nurses,” he said, estimating that about a quarter of the
school’s 1,600 students in any given year are enrolled in the MGH
center. Dakin said students can obtain contraceptives only if their
parents provide permission.

"They
do these things regularly in doctors’ offices – parents, children, and
doctors make decisions about the mental and physical well-being of
children. . . . and some of those decisions are decisions about
contraception,” Dakin said.

Dr.
Eric Weil, an internist at the MGH Revere HealthCare Center and
chairman of the city’s Board of Health supports the policy, referring
to a 2007 behavioral study that revealed that of the students who
reported having sexual intercourse, a quarter of them said they didn’t
use any form of birth control. He also said that Revere has the 12th
highest teenage pregnancy rate in Massachusetts.

Anti-Abortion Actvitist Starts Tour in Roanoke
Randall
Terry, an anti-abortion advocate, started his five-day, five-state tour
to oppose Democrat-led health-care reform, according to The Roanoke Times.
Terry is the founder of Operation Rescue, and in the 1980’s and 90’s
Terry was one of the most outspoken opponents of abortion.
In his
skit, Terry and other anti-choice opponents staged a scene where Terry
stabbed a plastic baby doll with a knife and then proceeded to pretend
to give a lethal injection to an elderly woman.
The article said he went as far as delivering a dead fetus to Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in 1992.
More
recently, he was arrested in March at the Notre Dame graduation
ceremony, where President Obama was the commencement speaker. After the
murder of Dr. George Tiller, Terry said "He reaped what he sowed."
The article said:

"At the core of Obama’s health care policy is the murder of babies and
the murder of the elderly," he said. "If this bill passes and they
expect us to pay … there will be horrific consequences to pay."
The consequences, as he explained them, would be contempt for the
government; vandalism; and acts of violence against those perceived to
be involved with abortions, but he denied involvement with violent
anti-abortionists.

More Protests at Florida Planned Parenthood
Anti-abortion
advocates gathered outside a Naples, Florida Planned Parenthood clinic
Saturday after it announced that abortion services would be available
there starting in September, according to a Naplesnews.com article.
The article said:
Almost every Saturday, 15 to 20 anti-abortion advocates routinely pray
in protest outside of Planned Parenthood, at 1425 Creech Road. The
Planned Parenthood Federation of America has been a longstanding
supporter of abortion rights and upholding the U.S. Supreme Court
decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion on Jan. 22, 1973.
Eileen
Hennessy, a director at Naples Pro-life Council, said, "We have been
coming out here to pray for 19 years now… We’re here every Saturday.
It just so happened that the news came out
yesterday and was in the paper today I guess."