Bill makes crisis pregnancy centers part of K-12 education

California law requires K-12 students to receive comprehensive sexual health and HIV-prevention education. Should that education include information about antiabortion crisis pregnancy centers?

Some California schools already do so — California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced earlier this month that his office sent a letter to one such center, Modesto Pregnancy Center which provides sex ed curriculum materials to Modesto City Schools District, demanding that it provide proof that the center provides medically accurate and unbiased sexual health education to public school students.

A California Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill to implement that policy statewide.

SB 1368, by Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, R-Yucaipa,

was heard Wednesday morning by a mostly empty Senate Education Committee.

“We have a looming primary care provider shortage in California,” Ochoa Bogh said, adding that licensed crisis pregnancy centers are filling in the gap, “particularly in rural areas, low-income areas and for people of color.”

As reported in 2012 by the Guttmacher Institute — a research and policy organization “committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights,” according to its website — the women who visit crisis pregnancy centers “to obtain free pregnancy tests or seek abortions are in need of accurate medical information and prompt medical attention.

“However, the centers often provide inaccurate information that may delay or interfere with women’s access to abortion and contraceptive services, improperly influence women’s reproductive health decisions and potentially increase the number of unintended births,” the report said.

Ochoa Bogh argued Wednesday that while many women in California know where to get an abortion, such as at Planned Parenthood clinics, “most women don’t know that free resources from pregnancy centers exist.”

Ochoa Bogh said that her bill “simply brings into parity the resources offered to students, giving them information on both Planned Parenthood and licensed pregnancy centers ... because with diverse options, we create informed futures.”

Committee Chair Josh

Newman, D-Fullerton, expressed some confusion over the bill at Wednesday’s hearing, and whether it applied to licensed crisis pregnancy centers or all crisis pregnancy centers. He said that the deadline for making such amendments had already passed.

Ochoa Bogh said it was her intention was that the bill only apply to licensed centers and that the bill could be amended in the future.

The bill faces an uphill battle in the Democratic supermajority-controlled Legislature.