After a disturbing video comparing abortion to the Holocaust was shown in an Alberta classroom, in a Red Deer Catholic school, sexual education advocates are calling for a complete overhaul of the curriculum.
The three-minute video was shown to a Grade 10 class in a religion class. It was called, “The Case Against Abortion: Personhood” and was shown during a presentation by a group called “Red Deer and Area Pro-Life.”
The video starts by drawing a direct comparison with the holocaust and murder by saying, “..abortion, infanticide and the euthanization of the disabled, elderly or infirm can all be justified. Of course, we’ve seen this before”, before the screen changes to show the word ‘Auschwitz’ fill the screen. The last half a minute of the video show the violence spread by the Nazi’s, further “solidifying” their comparison.
“The messaging in the video shown was irresponsible; it was medically inaccurate; it was theological. It was misinformation and it was myths,” the founder of Accessing Information not Myth, Christina Stasia stated after the offensive video was shown.
Sexual education groups are banding together, including, the Compass Centre for Sexual Wellness, Accessing Information, not Myths and the Calgary Sexual Health Centre, are all requesting that the Education Minister, David Eggen, launch an investigation into the incident, to make sure that students aren’t being “indoctrinated” with lies and false information.
“The video is a problem, and I’m glad that the board chair and the minister are recognizing that the video is a problem, but the video is hardly the only problem with that presentation,” Christina Stasia continued, “The entire presentation is rife with medical inaccuracies, with purposeful misinformation and judgments.”
The Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools offered a semi-apology, stating that they had intended for the presentation to teach the students that “human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception” which is a rule followed by the Catholic Church, but then added, that the presentations material did not achieve the “intended teaching outcome”.
The board chair issued a statement saying, “With more careful screening practices, our administrators will ensure the contents will be the most suitable for our students. We apologize for any issues this particular presentation may have caused for our students.” He did add that they intend to continue working with the pro-life group in the future, but have them tone down their presentation a little for students.
The board chair’s half apology shows that they don’t think that teaching that abortion and Holocaust are comparable situations is actually bad, but rather that they just did it in a way that was too disturbing for students. Their solution is to simply tone it down, so that the children, hopefully, won’t notice they’re being brainwashed with religious fueled, non-scientific, hate speech.
Using tax dollars to fund fear mongering, anti-abortion, rhetoric, that does nothing but shames and scares people, in this instance students, does nothing to stop teen pregnancy. Abortion should not be compared to the Holocaust, and the fact that this video was allowed to be shown in a classroom shows you the lengths that religious Christian hate speech is allowed, and tolerated, in schools.
It’s also time for a complete overhaul of sexual education, country wide so that different provinces aren’t allowed to have different forms of sex education, filled with religious bias. Catholic school boards should also be legislated to teach the same curriculum, since teaching non-scientific myth, while collecting tax dollars, should not be allowed.
