School-based clinics are now offering to implant IUDs into girls as young as 11.
It is truly amazing that some folks still refuse to believe that a SCHOOL would do anything like that.
When we told one former teacher who is now 93 about the way some schools have been presenting sex education to kids as young as fifth grade, his reaction was, “That can’t have happened, or they’d have been arrested”.
Another parent refused to believe that IUD information and opportunities were not originating from schools, claiming the story came from unreliable sources.
Consider that NH law says that minors, which could mean girls as young as 11, can have an abortion without parental knowledge or consent. Planned Parenthood’s website states that NH law requires the minors to inform parents 48 hours before the procedure, but that the parents still do not have the power to stop it. (So what good is the notification?)
So, then what’s the big deal about an IUD? Sure a doctor has to be the one to do the procedure, so it isn’t done in the ‘school’ itself, but have you ever heard of ‘school-based clinics’? They are the ‘one stop health and human services’ delivery establishments that the Clintons and Robert Reich dreamed of.
When it comes to teaching sex ed inappropriately to children who are too young, offering IUDs to girls who have barely reached puberty, or worse yet abortions, this behavior is what some might think would warrant arrest, and has been going on a long time. With the advent of school-based clinics and the push for schools to do more in the way of social services for students rather than just deliver academics, it bears keeping an eye on their activities and the law.
Just consider what happened to these 11-year olds in Stroudsberg PA in 1996.
From the Pocono Record:
Girls say school forced physical exams
By JOE McDONALD,Pocono Record Writer
Posted Jul. 14, 1999 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jan 6, 2011 at 6:29 PM
SCRANTON — Two teen-age girls testified Tuesday they were forced to undergo gynecological examinations at the J.T. Lambert Intermediate School in East Stroudsburg three years ago as part of a state-mandated physical.
In tearful testimony in federal court in Scranton, one of the girls said she tried to tell the nurse the school was making a mistake, that her family doctor had given her a physical examination the previous summer for a Christian camp, and that she had returned the paperwork to the school proving it.
The girl said a school nurse told her she could not find the paperwork, and then instructed her to remove her pants and get up on a table.
The girl, now 15, was 11 at the time the exam was given on March 19, 1996, by Dr. Ramlah Vahanvaty, one of the doctors hired by the school district to give physical examinations to students entering kindergarten and sixth grade.
Physical examinations are mandated by Pennsylvania school health law for all students entering kindergarten and sixth grade.
In a pre-trial ruling, the judge in the case stated, “Nothing in the statute provides how the physical exam is to be conducted.”
“I felt her finger go in my vagina,” the girl said, crying. “I hurt,” she said. “It was horrible.”
She said it hurt physically, but even more mentally.
The parents of eight girls are suing the doctor, two school nurses, and the school district, claiming they violated their childrens’ constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, as well as their privacy rights and parental liberty rights.
The lawyer for the school district, Rea Thomas of East Rockhill, said the district had an “absolute legal obligation” to perform the physical exams, and asserted the nurses and the doctor behaved professionally.
Thomas referred to a state police investigation that followed the incident, which touched off a firestorm of controversy and emotion at school board meetings, and said no wrongdoing was found.
The lawyer for Vahanvaty, George M. Nace of Allentown, denied in opening statements that the girls were given an internal exam, saying the physical “in no way constituted a gynecological examination.” He said four expert witnesses, including Dr. Bradley J. Bradford, president of the Pennsylvania Chapter of American Pediatricians, will take the stand in support of Vahanvaty, who he said will also testify and “go through this in detail” about what happened that day at the school. Nace said the doctor simply gave the girls a comprehensive examination.
Under direct examination by attorney Brian Thomas, the girl called into question just how comprehensive the exam was.
The girl said the doctor “never asked for my health history or if I was sexually active.”
She said she told the nurse that “my parents won’t like this” and asked to use the telephone, but the request was denied.
The girl said she was told she had to be checked for sexually transmitted diseases, and “to see if we were developing right.”
The girl’s father, Paul Tucker, said when her daughter arrived home that day from school the first words out of her mouth were: “Dad you have to kill someone for me.”
Tucker, an electrician by trade, said the experience “crushed” his daughter. He said he was upset by the experience and angered by the fact he never received an explanation from the school district on how they lost the paperwork from the family doctor and why the school’s doctor touched his daughter’s genitals.
Thomas, in opening statements, said the school document governing school physicals refers only to genital exams for boys.
He called the exams the girls received “aberrant.”
The school district sent home notices to parents while their children were in fifth grade, notifying them that their children were required to have a physical in sixth grade. The notices said the parents had three options: have a family doctor perform the physical; request that a parent be present for the school physical; or let the school doctor give the physical without a parent present.
Tucker said the school district never informed his family that his daughter was not “in compliance” with state-mandated physicals before his daughter was given her exam at the school.
Under cross-examination by Nace, Tucker admitted he has not been shy about letting people know what allegedly happened to his daughter. Tucker said he went on 38 radio interviews and discussed the matter with the Christian Coalition as well as the 700 Club and appeared on AM Philadelphia, a television newsmagazine.
The jury of five men and three women also listened to testimony from Jean Baumgartner, a mother of another girl who claims Dr. Vahanvaty touched her daughter’s genitals during the examination.
Baumgartner, a practical nurse, said she checked the box on the form the school sent her, instructing the school that she wanted to be present for the examination.
Baumgartner said she asked the school several times when the exam was going to be given but never received an answer.
The girl testified her efforts to stop the exam because her mother was not present were useless.
The mother said that when she found out what had happened to her daughter at school that day, ” … I couldn’t believe it.”
“I was home all day long and no one called to say she was having a physical,” Baumgartner said. “I filled out the form saying I wanted to be present.”
Baumgartner added, “I would never have allowed this type of examination at this age.”
Later when she tried to get answers from the school district, she said she felt they were “trying to shift the blame” onto the parents.
Both girls testified they sought therapy to get over the emotional stress.
Testimony resumes this morning before U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo.
