Bill Ames, appointed by Texas State Board of Education member Don McLeroy to a social studies curriculum writing team, has commented on our post about the relevance of abortion politics to the state board. We are reposting Mr. Ames’ comment here in its entirety:
I will explain exactly what abortion politics have to do with the SBOE.
In 2004, the SBOE adopted an abstinence-based sex education curriculum, in accordinance with the state education code.
Planned Parenthood was a substantial lobbyist for the anti-abstinence sex education curriculum demanded by TFN and other members of the education political lobby.
Planned Parenthood requires thousands of sexually active teens in Texas in order to keep its abortion mills profitably humming along.
Thus it supported the curriculum proposal that encourages teen sexual activity.
Abortion politics has lots to do with the SBOE………
So there you have it. According to Mr. Ames, people who oppose abstinence-only programs that keep students ignorant about how to protect themselves from unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases are simply trying to drum up profits for Planned Parenthood’s “abortion mills.”
The importance of rescuing the education of Texas schoolchildren from that kind of political hysteria and extremism could hardly be clearer.
Misogynist male hysteria.
Couldn’t be more ironic.
Mr. Ames:
I do not know of a single person or organization in Texas or anywhere else that is in favor of teenage promiscuity and teenage pregnancy. I say that as the Christian dad of a 15-year-old girl who just had a really bad experience with two of her friends who went with her to a church “abstinence-only” ring pledge night. All three of them made the ring-pledge that night at a local church. Several days later, my daughter’s two friends, who are members of a local fundamentalist church, were caught in the middle of the sexual act by one of their mothers. When questioned, the two unmarried Christian teenagers stated that they were consciously trying to have a baby out of wedlock. So, do not come to me with any of your “abstinence only” garbage. It does not work and Texas has the out-of-control teen pregnancy rate to prove it (2nd in the nation).
I got this one straight from the mouth of the guidance counselor at a local high school in my state. An injured guy on the football team badgered his girlfriend to have sex with him. She refused at first but gave in sometime later when the “facts of life” were explained to her by her boyfriend. He told her that his broken leg altered his male physiology so much that he could not possibly get her pregnant. Do you hear that, “Guys with broken legs cannot impregnate a woman!!!” She believed him. They had sex. She got pregnant first time out.
Texas needs comprehensive sex education to prevent teenage promiscuity, STDs, and abortions. If you want to shut down the abortion mills at Planned Parenthood, there’s your route. It really is that simple, but some people are too simple-minded to understand it.
Ames is outrageously wrong. Planned Parenthood is not opposed to abstinence but only to abstinence ONLY sexuality miseducation.
The religious cultists like David Koresh, Jim Jones, and others have long been known to keep the facts of life from the cult’s children so they could take advantage of them. Stories of 12 year old mothers have seeped out of many of the cults. Children having children isn’t isolated to just the cults. A retired school teacher, who had also been an area school board member, told me that within the last two years that one of the school districts near Houston had formed two full alternative classes for pregnant sixth graders.
Ignorance does not protect children from predator pedophiles, diseases or pregnancy. I’m not saying that Bill Ames or Randy Rives are in the same league as the above named cultists, but the policies they are promoting will leave Texas children as unprotected as any in the worst cult compound.
Don’t you think a better term would be “ignorance only” sex education?
After all, the abstinence part of the “education” clearly doesn’t work, but the ignorance clearly does.
Personally, I blame those bloody Australians. At one time, the Australian company Ansell was the largest producer of condoms in the world. Now, if Ansell could encourage Texans to have more sex, more safe sex, then they could sell more condoms. It is difficult to believe that Australians would have such an influence the sexual mores of Americans , but you can’t deny the facts.
Texis as Tex does.
Only 3% of services done by Planned Parenthood is performing abortions. Planned Parenthood has prevented millions of abortions because it has prevented millions of unwanted pregnancies. Republicans also associate teaching evolution, birth control, and stem cell research with abortions. Their ultimate goal is not just to ban abortions but to ban all forms of birth control.
This sounds like time for an essay on stopping birth control, the carrying capacity of a planet, and Malthusian population issues. I’m just not up to doing it this late. Suffice it to say that someone had better learn that all things on this planet have ultimate limits.
If these righties had their way, EVERYONE would have babies, even if some of them have the parenting skills of a rattlesnake.