A Planned Parenthood clinic in Salt Lake City is pictured on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (McKenzie Romero/Utah News Dispatch)
The Utah House on Friday passed a bill to prohibit schools from allowing educators from Planned Parenthood to teach in public schools.
The bill, HB233, won approval from the House on a 51-14 vote, mostly along party lines. It now goes to the Senate for consideration.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Nicholeen Peck, R-Tooele, is seeking to ban “entities that perform elective abortions” — like Planned Parenthood — from providing “health related instruction or materials in public schools.”
“Even if these elective abortion providers that might be teaching in the schools are not advocating by saying the word abortion, they are standing in front of them in a position of trust, and that’s a conflict of interest,” Peck said on the House floor, alleging Planned Parenthood makes “money in those industries on young people, even teenagers, having pregnancies and choosing their services.”
Utah law requires teens to have parental consent before they can receive abortion-related medical care.
The vote comes after a House committee last week held a public hearing in which Democrats and other critics pushed back on Peck’s bill, arguing it could jeopardize health and sex education while infringing on school districts’ ability to manage their own affairs and use free resources offered by Planned Parenthood.
For more than five decades, Planned Parenthood educators have offered “age-appropriate health education, such as maturation, sexually transmitted infections, and healthy relationships, in Utah schools,” according to the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah. “PPAU’s skilled educators follow all state laws and guidelines and only teach curriculum that has been approved by parents, teachers, and the district school board. Parents must opt-in and sign a permission form for their child to participate in these classes.”
Rep. Andrew Stoddard, D-Sandy, spoke against Peck’s bill on the House floor. He acknowledged Planned Parenthood is “largely unpopular” with the Republican-controlled House, but he said, “this is an important service that they provide.”
“The education of our kids is something that’s taken very seriously, and we should treat it as such,” he said. “But I don’t think we should be singling out an organization just because we don’t like them. If a local school district wants to partner with whatever organization to teach these kinds of classes, as long as they are doing it and following the law, we should let them.”
Peck said a “small percentage” of Utah’s schools are using Planned Parenthood educators, and “it’s not going to be difficult” for districts to “find other resources out there that are within compliance with state code.”
Rep. Carol Spackman Moss, D-Salt Lake City, a retired school teacher, argued against the bill, saying Salt Lake City school District uses some Planned Parenthood volunteers — but they’re already required to stick to a specific, state-approved curriculum, and parents already have to opt in to the classes.
“They don’t have an agenda,” Moss said.
After the House voted to approve HB233, House Democrats issued a statement to “strongly oppose” the bill as it heads to the Senate.
“This bill threatens the integrity of health education by prioritizing ideology over evidence-based instruction and relying on unverified anecdotal claims,” House Democrats said.
They added that Utah’s sex education curriculum is already vetted by the Utah State Board of Education and families must opt in to health education.
“Removing medically accurate resources could leave students without essential knowledge and increase the risk of unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections,” House Democrats added. “We believe in local control and trust the Utah State Board of Education to make informed decisions that prioritize students’ well-being. Utahns do not need the Legislature interfering with their family’s educational choices.”
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