LifeSite News | Teachers unions collude with Planned Parenthood to fund abortion with forced dues, pro-life teacher warns

April 15, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Union dues to the United States’ most powerful teachers unions subsidize abortions and finance Planned Parenthood’s indoctrination of children, according to a leading figure in the fight for teachers’ conscience rights.

On Sunday, Fox News published a column by Rebecca Friedrichs, who spent 28 years teaching in California public schools and was the lead plaintiff in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a 2016 Supreme Court case concerning forced union dues that was poised to strike a blow against forced union dues until the death of Justice Antonin Scalia led to a tied ruling that failed to set precedent. The column was adapted from Friedrichs’ 2018 book Standing Up to Goliath.

“Years ago, as a California teacher, I was shocked to learn that state and national teachers’ unions collude with Planned Parenthood,” Friedrichs wrote. “They use teacher dues money and resources — behind our backs and against our wills — to bring the abortion industry into our schools. Many of our nation’s public schools require teachers to instruct children as young as 12 on how and where to obtain birth control — including the morning-after pill and abortions — without parental knowledge or permission. If teachers refuse to teach this, the law mandates ‘experts’ like Planned Parenthood take over the classroom.”

She goes on to detail how the California Teachers’ Association (CTA) and the National Education Association (NEA), which advocates and donates heavily to a wide range of left-wing causes including abortion and transgenderism, work with far-left groups such as the Women’s March, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN), and Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) to “push a radical sexual agenda onto our kids and to punish teachers, parents and students who dare to speak out against it.”

Friedrichs cites the case of Judy Bruns, a Christian teacher in Ohio who took the opportunity at a NEA representative meeting to ask whether the phrase “reproductive freedom” in the group’s resolutions included support for abortion up to delivery and/or partial-birth abortions. Bruns was “mocked and shunned” by the Ohio Education Association’s leaders but got the answer: “We have no restrictions (or limitations).”

“David Schmus, a former teacher and executive director of Christian Educators Association International (CEAI), did some detailed research showing nearly $800,000 of roughly $1 million in donations by the NEA to a 2014 PAC was directed to Planned Parenthood,” Friedrichs noted.

“I’ve always been pro-life, but holding the lifeless frame of my miscarried niece or nephew vividly reinforced that belief,” Friedrichs concluded. “The on-screen testimony of a Planned Parenthood clinic director-turned-pro-life-advocate (in Abby Johnson’s Unplanned) confirmed what I already knew — abortion painfully, violently and permanently ends a baby’s life and scars even more. That’s one reason I sued the unions. So, pro-life teachers, abort your unwanted union membership. Our values and our children are at stake.”

While Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association ultimately failed to change the legal landscape, the Supreme Court ruled last year in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees that it was unconstitutional to force public-sector employees to pay union dues regardless of whether they wanted to join or supported their union’s political positions.

Read more at Teachers unions collude with Planned Parenthood to fund abortion with forced dues, pro-life teacher warns.