Curriculum Sides With Abortion

Special Report - February 3, 2010
The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s proposed updated curriculum guidelines for Civics and Economics courses include an assertion that the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion on demand in the United States, is comparable to court actions on segregation and ethnic discrimination in upholding individual liberties “against oppressive government.” The North Carolina Essential Standards for Social Studies include a question in the Civics and Economic Course that asks, “Using three Supreme Court Cases (e.g. Brown v Board, Roe v Wade, Korematsu v US) as support explain how the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld rights against oppressive government?” The question is given as an assessment prototype under the objective “Attribute individual liberties to ideals (e.g. natural rights/unalienable rights, popular sovereignty, civil rights, equality) derived from founding documents.”

Brown v Board of Education is the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared “separate but equal” segregation in education as unconstitutional and “inherently unequal” under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Korematsu v United States is the 1944 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld President Roosevelt’s executive order to force Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II. The Court found that protecting the country against espionage outweighed the individual rights of those Americans of Japanese descent who were sent to the camps. Roe v. Wade struck down 40 plus state and federal laws regulating and limiting access to abortion when it established a woman’s right to abortion under what it said was a right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

"The tide is turning against abortion, as more people are seeing this barbaric practice for what it really is," commented Bill Brooks, president of the North Carolina Family Policy Council. "For the state agency that is responsible for providing curricula to educate our children to suggest that opposition to abortion is wrong, and akin to opposition to civil rights is unconscionable. Although this may be the prevailing view in liberal academia, not only is there no factual basis for this assertion, but it grossly misrepresents the historical truth of events leading up to the Roe v. Wade decision."

The Essential Standards writing teams “are requesting feedback from all LEAs,” specifically by
“asking LEAs and schools to convene content and grade-level specific review teams to read the standards, discuss them, and compile critical feedback using the Feedback Form” found on the DPI Web site. Additionally, an individual survey is available for “parents, educators, students, businesses, non-profits, community organizations, and the general public” to provide input on the proposed standards. February 15 is the deadline to submit feedback. A second draft of the Essential Standards will be written later this winter after all feedback is reviewed.

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