This past week my pal Amy Kerr-Hardin posted a now-viral piece at Democracy Tree titled “Michigan Lawmakers Propose Bill to Prevent Practicing Condom Use on Bananas“. She was writing about new legislation introduced by Republican Tom Hooker, H.B. 4883, that would, in part, prevent sex education teachers from allowing students to practice using condoms in class. The pertinent section she wrote about says this:
A person shall not dispense or otherwise distribute, and shall not allow a pupil to practice with, a family planning drug or device in a public school or on public school property.
Hooker explained himself in an MLive article with one of the most hilarious headlines ever: “Hooker wants Planned Parenthood, cucumbers out of sex education“. In the article, Hooker explains it this way:
The only dealing that I did with birth control devices (when I was a teacher) was I gave the students the failure rates of all of them. The failure rate obviously tells you there is not safe sex except saved sex. To avoid sex is the only guarantee that you’re not going to get pregnant.
He seems pathetically unaware that the failure rate of condoms is higher when the people using them aren’t given proper instruction on how to do so. And that, if you want to prevent unplanned and unwanted pregnancies – and, therefore, abortions – encouraging contraceptive use should be at the top of your list.
But Hooker’s legislation isn’t entirely about preventing kids from practicing using condoms on bananas and cucumbers. It’s also yet another attack on Planned Parenthood. The bill specifically prohibits “an individual or entity that provides abortion or abortion counseling and referral services” from teaching sex ed in schools.
Why? Because, according to Hooker, groups like Planned Parenthood use sex ed classes to drum up abortion business.
I’m not kidding:
“There’s a perverse incentive for an organization like Planned Parenthood to get into the sex education business,” Hooker claimed. “It’s a conflict in that they give out or sell condoms, they offer pregnancy tests and (sexually-transmitted disease) testing and, obviously, if they’re pregnant they then would offer an abortion.“It just seems like an awfully comfortable arrangement for Planned Parenthood to teach sex education.”
This is just another disgusting distortion and perversion of what Planned Parenthood is all about. Only 3% of the services they provide are abortion services. But Hooker wants us all to believe that they want to nefariously increase the number of abortion customers through sex education of school children. It’s a sad commentary on just how desperate conservatives have become to kill one of the most important organizations in terms of women’s healthcare in the country.
FYI: If you want to prevent abortions, make sure everyone has health care, a high school education & birth control. Not the exact opposite.
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) June 21, 2012
