Uproar Over Mass. Schools Giving Elementary Kids Condoms
School officials in Provincetown, Mass., recently adopted a policy to make condoms available to elementary and high school students beginning this fall.
The new policy requires school nurses to supply the contraceptive if a student asks for it.
With each free condom, students will receive counseling, including information on abstinence. But parents will not be informed and cannot ask the school not to provide condoms to their child.
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Kris Mineau, President, Massachusetts Family Institute, called the new policy "radical" and "absurd."
"Making condoms available to first graders bullies parents to submit to an agenda that promotes sexual promiscuity to innocent children at their most vulnerable age," Mineau said in a statement.
The policy states that the Provincetown schools do not approve of sexual activity by students. Still, residents are not uncomfortable with it.
Mineau commented that the decision by the Provincetown School Committee "demonstrates the lengths to which some will go to emasculate parents' rights and undermine the notion of encouraging children to delay sexual activity.
Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick has asked the district superintendent to revise the policy. He told The Associated Press that he was against the age of the students covered by the policy and to the provision not allowing parents to be informed of any condom distribution.
"Obviously, this is a local issue, but I expressed my concern about the counseling and access being age-appropriate, and, for young kids, that parents ought to be involved," he told AP.
Following the uproar, School Committee Chairman Peter Grosso said Thursday that the committee will revisit the policy, according to The Boston Globe.
But Grosso added that he would not approve a policy that covers only high school students. "[B]ecause we all know kids are sexually active before high school," he told the local Globe.
The Massachusetts Family Institute, meanwhile, has urged Provincetown parents to take legal action "if necessary" to overturn the "inane policy."
