TRUSTEES OK RESOLUTION SUPPORTING ABORTION RIGHTS
S.D. Unified board says issue is private; students rally before meeting
The San Diego Unified School District board unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday in support of reproductive rights, including a right to abortion.
“The decision to end a pregnancy is a private medical decision,” said school board Vice President Sabrina Bazzo, who co-introduced the resolution, at Tuesday’s school board meeting. “Everyone should have access to safe, legal and accessible abortion. Prohibitions on the right to freely exercise reproductive freedoms are harmful to public health and safety.”
Before Tuesday’s school board meeting, more than 60 young people, mostly high school students, held a rally in support of abortion rights outside the school district’s headquarters, holding signs with statements such as, “Abortion = healthcare,” and “Not your uterus = not your choice.”
The board’s decision comes days after somebody leaked a draft opinion that showed a majority of current U.S. Supreme Court justices support overturning Roe v. Wade. The 1973 court decision had declared that states cannot outlaw abortion outright because the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause gives people a right to privacy, and the right to abortion falls within that privacy right.
The draft opinion goes in the op
posite direction and argues that the right to abortion is not protected by the Constitution, either directly or implicitly.
San Diego Unified school board trustees and protesters condemned the draft opinion. Students said the decision of whether to have an abortion is personal and private — a choice that each woman deserves to make depending on her own circumstances.
“We are here to say shame on you,” said Abbie Darling, a 16-year-old junior at Patrick Henry High School, during the rally. “Shame on you for deciding that rapists deserve less punishment than a decision about our own bodies. Shame on you for trying to criminalize abortion instead of providing accessible educational resources and contraception. Shame on you for making a decision about our bodies without our input and consent.”
Victoria Abrenica, a climate action and civic leadership instructor at San Diego High School, said during the rally that she became pregnant three years ago but was not mentally, physically or financially able to properly care for a child. She said it felt irresponsible to bring a new life into the world in light of the irreversible consequences of the global climate
crisis.
“So I made an extremely mentally and physically painful choice — it was my choice — to take a pill that terminated the pregnancy,” she said. She said she was lucky to live in a place where abortion was legal and where she could get care covered by insurance.
The school board resolution discusses the importance of comprehensive sex education and declares that the school district will be a “champion and defender of health equity and reproductive freedom for all.”
“San Diego Unified protects the rights of all students to make their own reproductive choices by ensuring access to accurate, ageappropriate information on sexual health,” the resolution states.
Bazzo said school districts are a safe haven where students can go to trained adults, such as school nurses or sexual education teachers, for information on their reproductive rights and where to go for sexual health services in circumstances in which they can’t talk to their parents.
California law says school districts must ensure that all students in grades 7-12 receive comprehensive sexual health education and HIV prevention education. That includes information about all legally available pregnancy outcomes, including abortion, as well as federally
approved contraceptive methods.
Bazzo said it’s important for San Diego Unified to provide comprehensive sexual health education so that students can be safe. She referred to studies that have shown comprehensive sex education, rather than abstinence-only education, is associated with better health outcomes, including a decreased likelihood of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection.
School board trustee Kevin Beiser said the leaked draft opinion of the court shows that people need to remember voting makes a difference.
“We’re finding ourselves in a position where the right to privacy may be completely gone. The right of gay marriage could equally be gone,” Beiser said. “If you’ve read the entirety of the leaked decision by (Justice Samuel) Alito, it’s very very startling where the direction that our country will be headed based on the opinions of five people.”
No one spoke against abortion rights at Tuesday’s board meeting.