An elementary school employee in Norfolk, VA who gave students models of a 12-week fetus accompanied by a card that says, “Some people think that my life began at birth; but my life’s journey began long before I was born…” was placed on administrative leave last week: A news article about the matter quotes lots of people reacting with breathless outrage. Here are some examples:
“It is hard to imagine that we would have an employee who believes it would be appropriate to share plastic fetus dolls with students in one of our schools,” School Board Chairman Stephen Tonelson said Thursday. … Board member Kirk Houston Sr. said he examined one of the dolls. “Very life like, and it’s a pro-life tool,” he said. “To be quite honest, that is so incredible to me, that a staff member would do something so … entirely inappropriate and unacceptable.” He said board members “were all pretty dumbfounded.” … An Oakwood parent said her fourth-grade daughter recounted getting one of the dolls from a school employee who handed them out to students during lunch time. “She comes home with a fetus and says, ‘Mommy, look what I got!’ and I said, “Where did you get that and why?’ It’s disturbing to see,” said the parent. She asked not to be named so that her daughter wouldn’t be vulnerable to retribution at school. The card accompanying the doll described the first 12 weeks of fetal development, she said. “As a parent, I choose to teach my children about those things later in life,” she added. “I did not sign a waiver for my daughter to be given a fetus.”
Um, the students weren’t given fetuses. They were given plastic models of fetuses — in other words, representations of what they themselves used to be at an earlier stage of life. And this is a problem…why, exactly? [HT: Christina at RealChoice]
