A high school biology exercise that treated aborting a pregnancy because of a baby’s genetic disorder as the moral equivalent of having the child has some parents in one Oklahoma town outraged.

According to KFOR NewsChannel 4, the question arose last week when five biology classes at Edmond Santa Fe High School in Edmond were given a “non graded” exercise that asked students what they would do if they found they child they were expecting carried a gene for dwarfism and a genetic repair procedure were available.

“You’ve found out that the child you (or your wife) carries has the gene for dwarfism.  A new therapy exists that may repair this gene before the
child is born.  What do you do?”

Available answers were:

1. Allow the child to be born with the gene, and we will accept the child as is.
2. Attempt the new therapy to repair the gene.
3. Terminate the pregnancy.

Reaction was strong, as can be expected. But what was most telling was the explanation of the educators.

School district spokeswoman Susan Parks-Schlepp defended the question as a simple classroom exercise, noting that students weren’t graded for their answers.

That might be true, but it’s missing the point in the way only an educational establishment can.

To abortion opponents, the procedure is taking a human life – not a medical procedure. For a public school to treat it as merely one option among others facing expecting parents automatically stacks the deck against students who come from families where that’s not what they’re taught.

And it automatically brings what they’re taught at home into question.

“This is not a subject I want my child discussing in class,” one parent wrote on Facebook, according to KFOR.  “Ethics and beliefs are for home, not school.”

This school has already decided what its beliefs are.

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Joe Saunders

Joe Saunders, a 25-year newspaper veteran, is a staff writer and editor for BizPac Review who lives in Tallahassee and covers capital and Florida politics. Email Joe at [email protected].

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