Rachel Maddow discusses censored pages on contraception in Arizona textbook

November 1, 2014 • 11:57 am

As I reported yesterday, a school district in Arizona has literally ripped one or two pages out of a public-school biology testbook (Campbell Biology: Concepts and Connections) because

Here’s the excised page from the textbook that the Maddow show has placed for perpetuity on this site. Two parts are marked, and it’s not clear which one was deemed offensive. The first part is simply about contraception, while the second does indeed refer to abortion, but in only one sentence that mentions the abortifacient mifepristone (it doesn’t claim that the morning-after pill causes abortion). Still, this is pretty tame stuff, and excising it seems excusable only on the grounds that religious morality considers abortion immoral. In other words, the kids’ knowledge about how to control pregnancy is being curbed by religious sentiments.  And really, are kids not going to learn about this stuff anyway? It’s not as if the Internet doesn’t exist. Or would school officials rather have a spate of pregnant teenagers on their hands?

 

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h/t: Michael

35 thoughts on “Rachel Maddow discusses censored pages on contraception in Arizona textbook”

  2. The school officials would rather stick their fingers in their ears and pretend that teens won’t ever figure out what sex is if it’s not mentioned in a school class.

    1. That’s exactly it. Those excised pages have the “p” word and the “v” word and some other nasty stuff that they don’t like in Arizona. You can put your finger in your ear, in fact it is encouraged, but don’t put anything else in anything else, and even saying that has me all in a flush…. Call the wacko lawyer from ADF! My rights have been trampled yet again!

      1. And I went to school with some kids whose parents were teenagers that figured it out in the 70s.

  3. It is clearly a very clever plot to inspire the students to look up the pages on the internet or elsewhere and give them careful study.

    1. Out of all the pages in that textbook, this will be the one that is the most read. Good work Arizona.

    2. there is nothing natural about killing a child, regardless of whether or not you believe in morality.

      2. Or would school officials rather have a spate of pregnant teenagers on their hands?

        there is nothing natural about killing a child,

        How can I put this politely? In the context of this page’s topic, “disconnected bollocks”. Or even “resorbed sperm”.
        Three species and several distinct orders (classes?) who occasionally commit infanticide are documented here, with a comment

        “It can seem unnatural,” Barthel says, “but there are reasons. They might sound cold to us, but they’re simple—and they have to do with resources.”[… and when the mother eats the baby …] “They become a resource, one she can’t afford to waste,”

        And also,

        “Before the 1970s, any type of infanticide in animals was considered pathological,” says Craig Stanford, a primatologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “Now, certain scenarios are recognized as part of an animal’s reproductive strategy.”
        Male lions are one of the most cited examples of this type of infanticide.

        As an alternative,

        Sometimes, zoo animals behave naturally. They mate. Or refuse to mate. They groom eachother. They get sick. They get better. They care for their young. They sleep – a lot.
        They fight.
        It must have been extremely unsettling for a handful of zoogoers to watch a male chimpanzee kill a three month old infant female chimpanzee at the LA Zoo on Tuesday. She was the first chimpanzee to be born at the LA Zoo in thirteen years and was therefore, in a sense, symbolic.

        Did you do the slightest item of research, or did you just repeat a prejudiced opinion of yours without doing the slightest fact-checking upon your ideas?

  5. Do you imagine that the Arizona School Board members who voted to keep students from learning about birth control methods and required virginity only maintained themselves as virgins throughout all their teen years?

    Virginity only has never been a successful birth control method. The hormonal flood of the teen years guarantees that numerous teens will lose their virginity even if virginity is the policy. Without birth control methods being used, pregnancies are guaranteed to happen.

    Notice in the chart the estimation that without use of any of the listed birth control methods one could expect 85 births in 100. Way to go Arizona!

    1. yes, birth control is necessary but if it fails or is not used, abortion should not be an option. Children deserve to live. Their life has value.

      1. yes, birth control is necessary but if it fails or is not used, abortion should not be an option.

        Says who? It’s a woman’s decision what she does with her body. If abortion is not an option for her, she’ll not have one, but denying her that right would be unconstitutional.

        Children deserve to live. Their life has value.

        A fetus is not a child.

      2. So women should be forced to carry the child of her rapist? How about a woman who has a disease like cancer and won’t carry the baby to term? What about all those potential kids on ice that are disposed of in the process of IVF?

      3. If life is as precious as you pretend, then you’re also fine with grabbing perfectly healthy people off the street, drain whatever blood and take any organs they can live without and giving them to dying people.

        You’d also be fine with harvesting organs from dead people without their or their relatives consent.

        You’d also be fine with keeping brain dead ppl alive for as long as possible and treat them just as any other living human being.

        It’s a horrible world you want to live in.

  6. This is just ridiculous. These teens are now more likely to get bad information and more likely to get pregnant. Thus the number of of elective abortions will increase, not decrease.

    Also as Keith said above, about a third of pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion (presumably God changed his mind and decided to add to his murder tally) so that man is displaying the ignorance of one uneducated in the subject. You’d think he’d want his children to do better than himself.

    If the Governor is so riled up about this, why doesn’t her office produce a pamphlet or something about adoption to be given to the students when they study that topic.

    This sort of thing is why Republicans are accused of waging a War on Women.

    1. BTW, the half-time score in the rugby, NZ vs USA, because I know Jerry won’t mention it, is: NZ 48 and USA 6.

      You don’t get scores like that in soccer 🙂

      3. Final score: All Blacks: 74 Eagles: 6

        The match was played at Soldier’s Field, so Jerry could have watched it if he so desired…but who would? Well, they had 61,000 spectators. Pretty good attendance for the US. The Americans were only able to practice 5 times since June (compare to the NFL that practices 5X in a week). We’ll get ’em next time.

        1. Bugger! Obviously me chanting U.S.A! U.S.A! didn’t work.

          (Worked for Oracle…. 🙂

    2. “This sort of thing is why Republicans are accused of waging a War on Women.”

      I wouldn’t go that far – Republicans have female family members and colleagues whom they get along with as well as anyone else – but Gregory Kusnick on another thread (here: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/arizona-school-removes-pages-on-birth-control-from-textbook-but-its-not-censorship/#comment-1089185) pointed out that it’s more about demonizing certain kinds of sexual behaviour. Their claim that it’s for the students’ sexual health is a load of rationalization at best.

      It’s ideological prudery. They’ve already made up their minds that anything other than within-marriage, procreational, heterosexual sex is sinful, regardless of any evidence from reality on the matter, for no further purpose than to cast a villain at whom a badge of goodness can be waved. It’s “ivory tower” fake ethics, at best.

  7. The text above states, as most of the physicians do, that abstinence is the only totally effective method of birth control.

    100% effective doesn’t exist.

    The virgin’s there to prove that abstinence doesn’t work… Guess Mary Magdalene knew better and got herself some real protection. Wich we wouldn’t want for our teens, would we?

  9. Strangely there’s no mention of Implanon (a small rod that can be inserted via a needle by your GP) that provides three years of contraception.

  10. Rachel also bought the URL arizonahonorsbiology.com., in order that students will be able to access the missing pages.

    Censors obviously not familiar with the Streisand effect.

    1. Good job for her, but I see one page on the pdf there. If the luddites are tearing up a page from the book, they need to add the reverse as well, even if its not the controversial part.

  11. That Arizona bill says textbooks must ‘present childbirth and adoption as preferred options to elective abortion’.

    My impression (and I’m no expert) is that childbirth is enormously more dangerous to the health of the mother than an early abortion. I’m sure there must be statistics somewhere. Couldn’t that law be challenged on grounds of health and safety… that it is promoting the more dangerous option? Could any mother who suffered complications in childbirth sue the living daylights out of the state of Arizona for recklessly endangering her health?

  12. Or would school officials rather have a spate of pregnant teenagers on their hands?

    Obviously they certainly would.

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