Mahony Hits School Sex Clinic Plans

Roman Catholic Archbishop Roger M. Mahony released a strongly worded letter today opposing proposed health clinics in Los Angeles high schools that would provide students with birth-control counseling and contraceptives.

“School birth-control clinics send a message to students legitimizing behavior contradicting our Judeo-Christian ethic,” the Los Angeles archbishop said in a four-page pastoral letter.

He urged Catholics and others “who value the family” to pressure public officials to drop plans to install such clinics.

The Los Angeles school board has given approval for its three sites, at Jordan, San Fernando and Los Angeles high schools. The Culver City school board has approved the concept but is still considering whether on-campus birth-control services should be included at Culver High.

Mahony said the clinics would undermine parents’ rights and interfere with freedom of religion by enabling teen-agers to “make serious health decisions concerning the use of oral contraceptives, treatment of sexually transmitted diseases and abortion” without reference to their parents.

Los Angeles school board member Jackie Goldberg, reached by telephone at a school conference in New York, said the pilot program in Los Angeles--scheduled to begin by mid-1987 pending receipt of private funds--”will not be making any referrals for abortions.”

Referred Elsewhere

However, Goldberg added, pregnant students could routinely be referred to other agencies that, in turn, might make such information available.

Goldberg said parental consent forms will be required before students can receive counseling or treatment at the Los Angeles schools in the project. But she and Los Angeles school district spokesman Bill Rivera admitted that the requiring of consent conflicts with California law and has not been tested in court.

“In California, any female age 12 or above can go even to her parents’ doctor and get contraceptives without parental knowledge or consent. . . . Confidentiality is a right,” Goldberg said.

But, she added, this rarely happens at the 79 birth-control and health-care clinics operating on high school campuses throughout the country because parental permission slips are needed for admittance, “even for treatment of something like a common cold.” Another 200 applications for school-based clinics are pending nationwide, Goldberg said.

Three birth-control clinics are already functioning at California high schools--one in San Francisco and two in the San Jose area--but none dispenses contraceptives on campus, Rivera noted.

Mahony’s protest is not the first the Catholic archdiocese has made against the clinics.

A year ago, Marguerite Byrns, representing Mahony, testified at a Los Angeles school board meeting that the clinics would “undercut the legitimate interests of the parents” and suggest that school officials condoned teen-age sex.

Reiterated Concerns

Mahony’s letter reiterated these concerns and added that “the very dignity of young people will be at stake.”

“Clinics will reduce human sexuality, fertility and pregnancy to expressions of our humanity which can be controverted by pills or devices, and ultimately abortion,” said the archbishop, spiritual leader of the nation’s largest Catholic archdiocese. “In addition, the misuse of sex or the choice to abort one’s baby brings devastating spiritual, psychological and social effects, not to mention a lengthy list of possible dangerous physical complications.”

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that contraception and abortion, except to save the life of the mother, are morally wrong.

$1.5 Million Needed

Rivera said the three Los Angeles school clinics will each need $500,000 a year to run. Funds are being sought through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation of Princeton, N.J., a philanthropic organization that has supported other on-campus clinics. No school funds will be used, and the clinics will be operated by outside health organizations, according to Rivera.

“We appreciate any advice the Catholic Church . . . wants to give,” Goldberg said.

“But they have their own parochial schools to run, and they don’t have to take our advice and we don’t have to take theirs.

“Parents seeking religious counsel can tell their children what to do . . . but we have very high unmet (sex counseling) needs in these schools, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t make this option available.”