It’s a new low in the culture wars.

Yesterday the Portland, Maine School Committee approved a plan that allows the health center of King Middle School to provide birth control pills and patches to students in the sixth grade. Parental consent or knowledge is not required. In fact, it is outlawed. Under Maine state law, once a parent has signed a waver allowing a child to be treated at a school clinic in case of sickness or injury, specific treatment is "confidential." Students (kids) decide for themselves whether to tell their parents about the services they receive.

It has also been revealed that the same middle school has been distributing condoms to students as young as eleven years old since 2002.

It’s a new low, but based on the dismal level of rational discourse among some parents, I’m afraid we haven’t hit rock bottom.

Duped by worst-case-scenario logic, these parents have lost common sense. They have relinquished their rights and responsibilities to the state.

Richard Verrier is a parent in the Portland School district. "If my daughter were not able to talk with me about something, if she couldn't reach me for whatever reason, to keep her safe and healthy, I would want to make sure she had access to those resources from trusted adults." Mr. Verrier’s idea of a trusted adult is abnormal. In the real world, a trusted adult does not give an eleven-year-old girl a birth control pill when the little girl comes to his office saying she is about to have sex and can’t reach her daddy. In this case, a trusted adult either makes contact with the parents or calls Child Services. If he can’t reach Child Services, he calls 9-1-1.

Mr. Verrier’s idea of a trusted adult is based on socialist principles. He has blind faith in the state. We can only assume he has absolute confidence that the trusted adult in question will also make sure his eleven-year-old daughter never misses a day on the pill. He has equal confidence that the trusted adult will help his little girl make "wise" choices about which guys to sleep with. After all, in this twilight zone where it takes a village to raise a child, only the state knows the confidential fact that the little girl is having sex and taking pills.

The good news is that other parents are in shock, "I just don't know how we can even look at this and consider it," said Diane Miller, also from Maine.

The answer to her bewilderment is simple. Thanks to the radical agenda of Planned Parenthood, what still sounds absurd to her has become the norm for others.

Planned Parenthood has convinced public school bureaucrats and some parents that more contraception in schools means less teen "pregnancy" (meaning teen "births"), and this is all that matters. They fail to say that more contraception also means more promiscuity (What happens when a teacher gives an adolescent male a handful of colored condoms?), and that more promiscuity always translates into more abortion. They don’t bother to do this kind of math, because in their twilight zone, not all numbers (human beings) have the same value.

God bless, Father Jonathan

P.S. Please excuse last week’s break from blogging. We’re back at it. Thanks for reading.

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