Thread by Peet.
At the public high school where I teach, a school-sponsored student club, Sharing Our Spirit, staged a "Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity" during school hours. Students wore red armbands and did not speak. The club's faculty adviser sent an e-mail to the entire faculty, including this: "They will be standing on behalf of the one-third of their generation that have been innocent victims of abortion." Was the students' activity legitimate? The adviser's? -- Name Withheld, Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
-----
If the school rightly permits students to form clubs irrespective of ideology, from protesting the Iraq war to promoting a pre-emptive attack on Mars, there is no reason to bar this one. If its members do not hamper the school's educational function -- and a daylong silent vigil need not -- their activities ought to be allowed. The school would have a beef if, for example, a club directed students to refuse to answer questions in math class.
The teacher, too, has an ethical right to free expression, but because she is in a position of authority, she must be sure all students, regardless of their views, are welcome in her class and treated fairly. Nothing in your account suggests that this wasn't the case. And it is noteworthy that she sent her (to me, nutty) e-mail message to her colleagues; she did not declaim it in class. As a legal matter, Arthur Eisenberg of the New York Civil Liberties Union cautions, "She may not turn the classroom into a soapbox for her views on matters unrelated to the curriculum."
Another lawyer I consulted noted that a public school, as a government institution, may not promote a religion. Although the club's message is expressed in secular terms, anti-abortion activism is so often bound up in religious sentiment that a religious message can be implicit. When the adviser of a school-sponsored club takes up religious advocacy, the school must intervene.
(Readers can direct their questions and comments by e-mail to ethicist@nytimes.com. This column originates in The New York Times Magazine.)
Thread by rhema.
It was late November when Angel and her boyfriend visited Silent Voices, a pro-life pregnancy resource center (PRC) in Chula Vista, Calif. Angel's menstrual cycle was also late. It wasn't the first time.
The sexually active 17-year-old Latina had stopped in at Silent Voices five or six times since 2004 to take a free pregnancy test. Over the years, said Sharon Pearce, the center's executive director, Angel revealed herself bit by bit. From her perfect French manicure to her designer handbag and jeans, it was clear that her family had money. When she wanted a certain kind of car for her 16th birthday, she told Pearce one day, it appeared in the family's garage, right on time.
Each time Angel took a pregnancy test, it came back negative. Until November. When she saw the double lines indicating she was carrying a child, she said, "I don't want to have a baby, so I shouldn't have to."
On her intake form, Angel had marked that if she was pregnant she would have an abortion.
Culturally, Angel cuts against the grain of traditional Hispanic thinking on abortion. For 19 years, Silent Voices has operated in Chula Vista, about five miles north of the Mexican border. Ninety percent of its clients are Latinas. The majority come from Catholic homes and attend churches whose official writings define abortion as a "grave moral disorder" on par with murder...
Thanks for the ping!