A middle school teacher in Sacramento, California, is under investigation by the Sacramento City Unified School District after showing videos about the reality of abortion. The Sacramento Bee reports that parents complained after their children watched the video series at AbortionProcedures.com, in which former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino describes the most commonly used abortion procedures during each trimester of pregnancy.
According to the Bee, school district spokesman Alex Barrios described the videos as “completely inappropriate for the classroom” and claimed they fail to “meet the district’s approved family life and sexuality curriculum.” While the school district did not identify the teacher under investigation due to confidentiality policies, reports indicate the teacher is a science teacher. In the school district, science teachers are required to present lessons on “family life and human sexuality.” The Bee states:
According to the district’s written policies, family life and sex education classes should “help students understand the biological, psychological, social, moral and ethical aspects of human sexuality and shall comply with the requirements of law and administrative regulation.”
Live Action president and founder Lila Rose responded:
According to the Sacramento Bee, the district’s governing board states that family life and sex-education classes should ‘help students learn how to gather and organize pertinent facts, discriminate between fact and fiction, draw intelligent conclusions and respect the opinions of others.’ These videos were designed to be teacher aids and are medically accurate, created in consultation with a group of doctors and experts, and have been viewed online nearly 100 million times. The abortion procedure series are medical animations, not graphic footage, and accurately depict the most prevalent abortion procedures in a format suitable for teens.
Rose added that “California allows abortion clinics to perform an abortion on a teen girl without her parents knowledge or consent – making it absolutely necessary that schools educate students about the facts of abortion… and they deserve the information about fetal development, what happens during an abortion procedure, and its risks.”
“The district’s own policies advocate for sex education classes that “help students understand the biological, psychological, social, moral, and ethical aspects of human sexuality and shall comply with the requirements of law and administrative regulation,’” added Rose. “How can students understand the biological, moral, and ethical aspects of abortion without knowing what the abortion procedure entails for both the developing child and mother? We encourage the Sacramento City Unified School District to be a leader in accurate abortion education by using the abortion procedure videos in all middle school science, sexuality, and family life classrooms.”
The written policies do not specifically include guidelines for the discussion of abortion, which falls under the undefined category of “controversial issues.” The district encourages discussion of controversial issues and states that it “believes that students should have opportunities to discuss controversial issues which have political, social or economic significance and which the students are mature enough to investigate and address.”
But the abortion procedure videos are not political. They are factual. These videos show what actually takes place in an abortion and are narrated by Dr. Levatino, who committed more than 1,200 abortions.
According to reports, the teacher’s presentation also included the music video for the song “Can I Live?” Nick Cannon, the artist behind the music video, has previously stated that his song is not meant to be “a political statement,” telling USA Today, “I’m just thanking my mom for being strong.” Elsewhere Cannon has said, “I’m not pro-life or pro-choice. I’m pro-Nick. I’m just happy to be here.”
The AbortionProcedures.com videos are so powerful that they’ve been shown to change pro-choice minds after just one viewing:
Understandably, some students reported being “disturbed” by the content of the presentation. Abortion procedures, which violently dismember a living child with a beating heart, are disturbing. While perhaps the content was unsettling for some middle school students, it would be naïve to think abortion does not affect these same students. After all, Planned Parenthood, recently sponsored ads aimed at young teens with the tagline “Sex is hot- bad sex ed is not.” Decades of documented evidence show that this same Planned Parenthood performs abortions on girls as young as 12 without reporting suspected abuse.
Unplanned pregnancy affects young teens, and they deserve the information necessary to know what abortion is and what it does before they make a choice.
