The following is a Catholic Action League of Massachusetts news update…
On September 7th, Mr. Bob Katzen, Publisher of the Beacon Hill Roll Call, contacted the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, seeking a comment from C. J. Doyle on House Bill 662—An Act Relative To Instruction In Pregnancy And Pre And Postnatal Care
The measure is being sponsored by three pro-life legislators—State Representatives Joseph D. McKenna (R-Webster), David F. DeCoste (R-Norwell) and Michael J. Soter (R-Bellingham).
The proposed law would direct all public schools in the Commonwealth develop a curriculum—consistent with the “accepted teachings of the National Institute of Health”—to educate students about the development of the child in utero. It would then be taught as a required subject for grades seven through nine.
The curriculum would emphasize “the real expectations and responsibilities of parenthood.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment:
“Representative McKenna’s bill is timely, warranted and appropriate, and would be a useful addition to any health or biology curriculum. It would be more suitable however, for secondary school than for junior high.”
“Advances in the science of embryology have given us new insights into fetal development, including the capacity of the unborn child to experience pain.”
“Meanwhile, improvements in health care and medical technology have expanded the gestational parameters of viability for a child outside the womb.”
“McKenna’s idea would probably find, however, a more receptive environment in private and religious schools and among home schooling parents. In public education, it would face unrelenting opposition from an administrative class, and from a teaching profession, ideologically hostile to any curriculum which affirmed, or even implied, the humanity of the unborn child.”
An additional comment from C. J. Doyle: “Representative McKenna’s proposal, clearly, would be more age appropriate for high school students than for minors in junior high school. A seventh grader could be as young as eleven years old. At that age however, they are already being proselytized by values neutral sex education in government education facilities.”
“Parents are the primary educators of children. The real solution is to end the government education monopoly of taxpayer financing and to find alternatives to an increasingly sexualized, authoritarian, propagandizing, anti-family and anti-Christian government school system.”
