By WND. High-school and college students at an estimated 350 schools across the U.S. are walking out of their classes to support life and protest Planned Parenthood on Wednesday.
The walkout was coordinated by the Students for Life of America. The teenagers are leaving class for 17 minutes, which the organization says is the same amount of time it takes Planned Parenthood to perform as many as 10 abortions.
The event drew its inspiration from a national anti-gun walkout on March 14 in which students across the nation left classes to protest gun violence and demand increased gun-control regulation.
In March, Julianne Benzel, a history teacher at Rocklin High School in California, was forced to take administrative leave when she told her students there’s a double standard when kids can walk out over gun control but not to oppose abortion. While she didn’t discourage her students from participating in the gun walkout, she said schools must be willing to support other causes as well.
“And so I just kind of used the example which I know it’s really controversial, but I know it was the best example I thought of at the time – a group of students nationwide, or even locally, decided ‘I want to walk out of school for 17 minutes’ and go in the quad area and protest abortion, would that be allowed by our administration?” she said. (Read more from “350 Schools Are Participating in Walkouts, but Not for Gun Control” HERE)
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No, the March for Our Lives School Walkout Is Not the Same as Pro-Life School Walkout
By The Hill. Now, on April 11 students are planning to walk out of their schools to protest the constitutionally protected right to have an abortion. The march was stirred by a teacher in Sacramento who questioned whether the administration of her public school would support students who wanted to walk out of their classrooms to protest the right to abortion care, as the school had supported the March 14 walk out. Indeed, anti-choice media has already declared this Rocklin, Calif. high school student activist a hero, and villainized the perceived double-standard.
However, I’d like to first point out that not all schools did support their students who walked out on March 14. Some were even sentenced to detention for their solidarity and activism. Students accepted those consequences and walked out anyway.
Secondly and more importantly, I want to talk about the true crux of the issue here, which is that our collective inability to pass gun control restrictions is based on our desire to control other people. To control those who do not have the financial access to private health care or could pay for a procedure themselves. To control women.
After every mass shooting, we all see the albeit well-intentioned quotes and memes and internet commentary comparing what women go through to receive abortion care to what gun restrictions in this country should look like.
But this narrative only works to diminish the true hurdles, perseverance and determination that women and people have to conquer to receive health care. We cannot compare what women go through to access constitutionally protected health care to regulations and restrictions on firearms. (Read more from “No, the March for Our Lives School Walkout Is Not the Same as Pro-Life School Walkout” HERE)
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