The national media may think that the hottest news topics are the Iran affair and international terrorists, but grassroots America is a great deal more interested in the proposed installation of sex clinics in public schools. A consortium of foundations and social service professionals has been trying to get them into schools for the last year and a half, but is running into intense and vocal public opposition.
A typical example is the way they were stopped last month in the state of Washington. Three months ago, state legislation to establish ten school-based clinics to prescribe and dispense contraceptives to teenagers, spending a first-year budget of $1 million, was considered a sure shot for passage.
The forces backing school sex clinics were very prestigious. They included the Washington Education Association, Washington Association of School Boards, Washington Association of School Principals, Washington Nurses Association, School Nurses of Washington, United Way of Washington, Public Health Departments, the city of Seattle, and the Speaker of the Washington House. With that lineup, how could any proposal fail?
Concerned parents were told it was “impossible” to stop the bill. Then, the grassroots went into action. Sex clinics became the most called-about issue in the history of the legislative hotline at the State Capitol.
Legislators received hundreds of letters, postcards, and phone calls, the overwhelming majority opposed to the clinics. Republican county central committees passed resolutions against the clinics. Parents sent speakers to any local group or board meeting that would listen.
Opponents of sex clinics printed a fact sheet and issued legislative alerts. They produced three one-minute radio spots about the clinics and raised funds to put them on the air. Planned Parenthood fought the parents all the way, bringing in two speakers to promote the school sex clinics. That turned out to be a plus for the opponents because, only after Planned Parenthood openly entered the debate would the newspapers begin to report the issue at all.
When 300 people turned up at the hearing, it had to be moved to a larger room. Facing the inevitable defeat of the school sex clinic legislation, the committee let the bill die without a vote.
In other states, the biggest deterrent to the installation of school sex clinics is the awesome legal liability for personal injury which they impose on the schools. Any school plunging headlong into the practice of medicine should fear for its fiscal survival.
The clinics create a pool of thousands of potential young plaintiffs. Medical care is the most volatile and costly, and expanding area of tort liability. Every school is a “deep pocket” for a damage suit; it is a taxpayer-supported entity seemingly able to pay huge judgments or insurance premiums by raising taxes or cutting other parts of the budget.
The issues involved in these potential suits are at the cutting edge of the ever-expanding frontiers of tort liability: reproductive, genetic, and contraceptive technology.
Suppose a student receives condoms from the sex clinic after being told that they will protect him from AIDS, yet still contracts the disease due to faulty manufacture or the usual rate of failure. Even if the school wins the case, it is costly to defend it. Imagine dozens of such suits by students who contract AIDS or any other venereal disease, and by girls who get pregnant after failed contraception, and who suffer bad effects from an abortion recommended by the school.
It is basic law that, once a school undertakes to provide a service, such as bus transportation, psychological testing, food or milk, shop work or physical exams, the schools are held to the same standard of care as anyone else. A school providing medical care is as vulnerable to medical malpractice suits as anyone else.
The schools are whistling in the air if they think they will be protected by the parental consent form. It is unlikely that any court would hold that parents can waive their rights to authorize medical treatment in such a blanket, perfunctory manner. These parental consent forms will not protect the schools from damage suits any more than a “use at your own risk” warning will protect the auto manufacturers if a wheel falls off of a new car.
No wonder, despite the support of prestigious organizations backed by massive foundation funding, a year and a half of effort has only increased the number of schools with sex clinics from 50 to 80 out of the 15,500 school districts.
