A Personal Testimony Regarding School-Based Clinics
from Marcella Melendez, parent
My name is Marcella
Melendez. I am a parent from Culver
City, California, where in December 1986, while two of my children were
students at Culver City Middle and High schools, I
discovered that there was a plan to implement a School-Based Clinic on the
joint campus of the two schools.
At that time we, concerned parents,
were assured by all clinic supporters of many things:
1. that the clinic had nothing to do
with abortions or contraceptives.
2. that if we did not want our
children to participate we simply did not sign them up.
3. that the clinic was to be free and
would not cost taxpayers a dime.
Today, AB 1363 would effectively put the
financial burden of paying for school-based or school-linked clinics squarely
on the shoulders of the very people we were assured would not end up picking up
the tab for allowing strangers to medically treat children behind their
parent's backs, the taxpayers.
In my case, I took every opportunity to
make it perfectly clear that I did not want my children to be affected by the
school-based clinic, and I was repeatedly assured that if I did not want my
children involved, they would not be.
However, one day, when my son was in
7th grade, I dropped him off at school in the morning only to receive an
automated telephone call, which originated from the school, informing me that
my son had missed one or more classes that day. I told my husband when he got home from
work and we waited for our son so we could find out what had happened.
When my son arrived, we asked him if he
had not attended school, and he answered, "Of course. Mom dropped me off." I told him about the telephone call and
he responded, "Oh that, I was called out of my History class to go to the
clinic and they kept me there into the next class, so I was late in
arriving."
My husband and I hit the roof. We began threatening to sue the district
and everyone involved. We were so
upset that we ended up upsetting our son so much that he ended up crying and
begging us not to do anything.
The following day I called the
school. Shortly after, I received a
call from the nurse that had pulled my son from his class. She said it had been a mistake and she
apologized. When I contacted a
lawyer, he advised me that since an apology had been made, he did not recommend
that we pursue a lawsuit.
Obviously, the clinic people already
knew how to get away with this sort of abuse; and, no doubt, they learned not
to retain children in the clinic between classes. Had it not been for that oversight, we
may never have known that they say one thing and do another.
We found that in school the children
were told and reminded that in California children have the
right to obtain "confidential medical services" without the
need for parental notification or consent.
Those "confidential medical services" include: contraceptives,
abortions, drug, alcohol and mental health services. Pretty serious stuff
for young, bewildered children to be deciding on their own, or with the help of
strangers, behind their parent's backs.
My deep regret is that my husband and I
did not handle our situation better.
Had we remained calm, we could have sued the district and closed down
the clinic in the process; saving countless children and their families from
exploitation and unnecessary trauma.
Although I repeatedly and publicly
asked whether the school-based clinic would give out contraceptives or refer
for abortions, and although I was constantly assured that they would not, we
found out shortly after the clinic opened that the first director of the clinic
was not a pediatrician, nor a family practitioner, but rather an ob/gyn, an obstetrician/gynecologist, who was at that time, a
practicing abortionist at the UCLA hospital in Westwood. Today, I am told, the clinic has boxes
and boxes of all kinds of contraceptives on campus, available for the use of
the children.
In 1972, when my husband and I
purchased our home to raise our children in, we specifically chose Culver City
because of the quality of its schools.
However, the opening of the clinic created such a serious conflict in
family values between our family and the schools that we were forced to take
our children out of public school and send them to parochial schools, thereby
having to pay twice for our children's education. Other families did the same. The result has been that following the
opening of the clinic, the environment of these two Culver City schools started
a steady decline to the point where today these schools have deteriorated.
I have come to believe that any
school-based clinic or school-linked clinic, which is designed to have access
to children while they are at school and away from the family, is a very
dangerous proposition.
All the horror stories from parents
whose children have been damaged by these harmful and wasteful clinics should
cause our responsible elected officials to hold public hearings, providing
parents with an opportunity to be heard, before voting to expand these clinics
throughout the state.
But this is California, this isn't OUR
state. Wrong! What happened in California is now
happening all across the United States, in every state, under Goals 2000, Goal
One: Readiness-to-Learn. Under
readiness-to-learn, a child is defined as "at risk" and in need of
social and health services, if that child does not come to school "on the
first day and every day thereafter ready to learn." Remember what Dr Shirley
McCune said about the new role of schools in the development of
human resources (your child). The
bottom line is that the state, through systems education (education reform)
that has transformed the function and role of the government and the purpose of
education, views the child as a human resource to be raised up as the state
sees fit and to meet the needs of the state. Just as a cow is chattel to a rancher,
who takes care of its needs in the interests of the cow meeting his needs
(money), so the child is to the state.
Lynn M Stuter
Education Researcher
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