Rep. Steube Introduces SHIELD Act to Protect Parental Rights in Schools
WASHINGTON – U.S. Representative Greg Steube (R-Fla.) today introduced the School Health and Instructional Environment Limits and Disclosure (SHIELD) Act, legislation requiring local educational agencies to notify parents before distributing or disseminating information about abortion or abortion-related services to students. The bill also prohibits abortion providers and their subsidiaries from distributing or disseminating such information to students on school grounds or through a school’s virtual platforms, including social media. The SHIELD Act is endorsed by Students for Life Action, a leading national organization fighting to protect the unborn and defend the right to life.
“I believe every child, born and unborn, is made in the image of God and deserves to be protected, not managed behind their parents’ backs. No school employee should ever schedule an abortion for someone else’s daughter and tell her to keep it a secret from her own mother and father,” said Rep. Steube. “I’m fighting for the unborn and I’m fighting for parents, because those two fights are the same fight. The SHIELD Act keeps abortion providers out of our classrooms and puts parents back in charge of these conversations with their kids.”
“‘School Health and Instructional Environment Limits and Disclosure Act,’ better known as the SHIELD Act, provides long-overdue protections for students from a predatory abortion industry infiltrating classrooms to push deadly abortions – without any parental involvement. Rep. Greg Steube’s bill has SFLAction’s full support as he works to ensure that when it comes to talking with kids about life-ending abortions, parents are engaged. Planned Parenthood’s own annual report makes it clear that they start marketing early, infiltrating schools to build a customer base for life. Parents need to know what schools are teaching their children and need to be sure that when they send a child to school, their grandchildren are not being targeted by school officials who cut those who care most from a life-and-death decision. We all saw the chaos in Fairfax County, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C., where Students for Life rallied against secret school abortions. We will fight to ensure that schools do not become another place for Planned Parenthood to push for abortion deaths for profit and that parents are fully informed about what their children are learning,” said Kristan Hawkins, President, Students for Life of America & Students for Life Action.
This legislation is also co-sponsored by Reps. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.), Sheri Biggs (R-S.C.), and Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.).
The need for greater parental transparency has been underscored by incidents such as one in Fairfax County, Virginia, where a public high school social worker reportedly scheduled an abortion appointment for a 17-year-old student, paid the associated clinic fees, and instructed the student to conceal the matter from her parents. The U.S. Department of Education has since opened an enforcement action against Fairfax County Public Schools.
Federal law already gives parents the right to inspect instructional materials used in their child’s curriculum and requires parental notice for certain nonemergency, invasive physical examinations or screenings administered by schools. However, no comparable requirement specifically exists when schools distribute or disseminate information about abortion or abortion-related services to students.
Organizations such as Planned Parenthood have used sex education programs, educator training, and classroom instruction to reach K-12 students on abortion-related issues, often with limited parental awareness of the content being presented. Taxpayer-funded schools should not serve as a venue for abortion providers or their affiliates to promote abortion-related information to minors without parents being informed.
The SHIELD Act closes that gap by amending the General Education Provisions Act to require parental notification before abortion-related information is distributed or disseminated to students. The legislation also prohibits abortion providers and their subsidiaries from using K-12 schools or school-operated virtual platforms to distribute abortion-related information to students. The bill defines an “abortion-related service” as any medical, surgical, or support care directly related to terminating a pregnancy.
The full text of the SHIELD Act is available here.
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