Planned Parenthood is pioneering a new model of reproductive health services for Los Angeles County teens by opening 50 clinics at area high schools. The program — announced Wednesday and launched in partnership with the school district and county health department — is believed to be the most ambitious effort in the country to bring these types of services to at-risk students in public schools.
The program, funded by an initial investment of $10 million from Los Angeles County and $6 million from Planned Parenthood over three years, will offer a full range of birth control options, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, and pregnancy counseling, but not abortion, for an estimated 75,000 teens. The program will also train hundreds of teens to be “peer advocates” to help provide information about safe sex and relationships.
“Teens listen to other teens,” said Jennifer Rivera, 23, a Planned Parenthood staffer who will oversee the training.
Students will be able to walk into the clinics or make appointments and will be allowed to leave class for them. Information about the appointments will be in protected medical files not accessible to school officials. Under California law, minors can consent to certain medical services, such as receiving birth control or mental health counseling [and abortion], and health care providers are not allowed to inform a parent without the minor’s permission.
The announcement comes as high schools and colleges have become a priority battleground for abortion rights advocates and antiabortion activists.
California has taken a leading role in pushing back against efforts by the Trump administration and conservative legislators to cut government funds for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, impose new restrictions on abortion and shift the conversation about teens and sex toward abstinence. In October, it became the first state to require its public colleges and universities to offer abortion medication under a law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).
Five of the Planned Parenthood centers opened a few weeks into the school year. The rest are to be added before June. Officials involved in the project said the selected schools — in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest — were targeted because they are largely low-income and have no similar medical providers in the vicinity. Two public health officials, trained by Planned Parenthood, will be stationed full time at each school to provide education and counseling, and a Planned Parenthood nurse practitioner or other medical provider will come once a week.
Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and a former high school principal, said the program grew out of conversations about strategies for combating the area’s alarming rise in sexually transmitted diseases, such as gonorrhea and chlamydia, among young people ages 15 to 24.
She said the clinics will be called “Wellbeing Centers” because they will do more than provide simple medical services: “We want to support their general well-being, the ups and downs of being a teen….”
The above comes from a Dec. 11 story in the Washington Post.
Gets scarier all the time. They want to tell our kids. These are the last people in America I want telling our kids anything. “We want to support their general well being…” Planned Parenthood says. Well I do not want this group telling our children their non-Catholic slant on how to achieve well-being in this life. These are the same people encouraging them to experiment with sex, and telling them they don’t have to discuss these things with their parents, that the faith is outdated and backwards, and they can be an gender they want, etc.
An outrage that is being allowed to happen. Parents and concerned people should be fighting this tooth and nail. Planned Parenthood is in the business of selling abortion – they know that the earlier kids begin to have sex, the greater likelihood they will face a pregnancy. PP is happy to provide, for a fee, baby killing services to teens. Their fruit is rotten and PP must be resisted at every level!!
This news story is just horrifying! Young people will have their lives destroyed, with filthy, sinful promiscuity– – and millions more babies will be selfishly killed!! The increasing destruction and breakdown of our society will just be horrific! Kids must be formed in good character, and Judeo-Christian Morality, with good Moral Consciences, during their school years! They need to learn maturity, self-control, and Chastity! Sex must not be allowed, outside the sacred union of one man and one woman, in lifelong Traditional Marriage!!
When I was young, unmarried high schoolers found to be having sex in high school– got in the worst trouble possible- and if the girl was pregnant– the girl and her boyfriend were expelled from both public and Catholic high schools! Only a very few “bad.kids” made tragic mistakes like this, in those days! Christian Morality was well-established in our society, at that time! Many people got married after high school, in their late teens and early twenties, and settled down, and raised families! A much better society!
During that time, when I was young, virginity was upheld as the standard, for all who were unmarried, and most people were virgins, on their Wedding Day, which is the way it should be! Young people must practice chastity, self-control, reserving themselves to give in Holy Matrimony, on their Wedding Night, to their one, beloved marriage partner, lifelong! In our Wedding Mass, the Bride takes flowers to the altar of Our Blessed Mother, consecrating herself to her, in her new role as a wife and potential mother!