Oklahoma Is Siphoning Money From Schools and Pouring It Into an Anti-Abortion Curriculum [View all]

[cali]

Oklahoma’s schools are among the worst in the country, but at least state politicians are tackling that problem head-on with a law outlining an important new curriculum. With the help of a measure signed last week by Republican Governor Mary Fallin, educators will be newly prepared to convey the lesson “that abortion kills a living human being.”


The law, HB 2797, which goes into effect Nov. 1, requires both the state’s Department of Health and its Department of Education to work toward “the purpose of achieving an abortion-free society.” In practice, this means that the Health Department will be developing a barrage of “public service announcements, media,” and other agitprop; posting on its website that “The State of Oklahoma strongly urges you to contact them if you are pregnant”; and otherwise working to make women feel watched. The new law also says that “no program or state employee may refer any student to a medical facility or any provider for the performance of an abortion.” The Health and Education Departments have been directed to work together to create “education programs regarding the humanity of the unborn child” for Oklahoma’s ninth-through-twelfth graders. (Parents would be able to opt their children out of these classes, according to the Tulsa World.)


Critics have already raised concerns about what subjects might suffer to make room in the school day for anti-abortion propagandizing. “Adding yet another mandate on [teachers] and forcing them to have those very emotional and political conversations with young people just takes away instructional time from other areas,” Democratic State Representative Emily Virgin said, according to the World.


Time isn’t the only limited resource that Oklahoma can’t afford to pour into lecturing teenagers about how life begins at conception. Oklahoma has a $1.3 billion budget deficit, and that weight is falling heaviest upon its struggling school system: recently reported that Oklahoma’s $3 billion education budget had been cut by $58 million since January. Though the law technically establishes a “Public Education on the Humanity of the Unborn Child Fund”—“a continuing fund, not subject to fiscal year limitations”—to pay for the high school programs, it’s not at all clear where the money will come from to fill it. The Education Department estimated this spring that the it would cost up to $160,000 to develop materials for the program and about $10,000 per high school, or about $4.78 million total, to put the program into action.


<snip>

read:http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/06/13/oklahoma_governor_mary_fallin_signs_bill_to_create_an_abortion_free_society.html