Plan for School-Based Health Clinics Assailed

* The Board of Trustees of the Santa Ana Unified School District will soon be asked to approve a plan that would establish school-based health clinics in certain elementary schools within the district.

The individuals who are vigorously promoting this plan at district headquarters make it sound very attractive, but there is a darker side to the story that they are very careful not to publicize.

Such school-based health clinics have been established at many locations around the country. After starting, innocently enough, by providing general health services to elementary students, they are typically expanded into the intermediate and high school levels, where they are used to distribute contraceptives and provide abortion referrals to students, often without parental knowledge or consent.

Clinics of this type have already become an expensive source of bitter controversy in several other school districts in California. Unfortunately, our board members, and our parents, are not being fully informed by clinic promoters here.

I would urge board members not to approve any clinic plan until all the facts are known, and I would likewise urge all Santa Ana citizens to write to the school board to stop the clinics now, before they are established and become impossible to remove.

JACK T. OLLESTAD

Santa Ana