Diocese Denies Support to Hoover High Clinic : Education: Catholic Church fears that proposed campus health facilities might send students to agencies that provide counseling on birth control and abortion.

The Catholic Diocese of San Diego said Thursday it cannot support a proposed health clinic at Hoover High School because students might be referred to agencies off campus that offer birth control or abortion counseling.

The position statement, released in a memo to local pastors and lay leaders from the diocese’s Office for Human Life and Development, is the strongest yet in clarifying the Roman Catholic Church’s position on the planned health clinic at the East San Diego high school.

In June, the church said it did not oppose health clinics in general as long as they do not provide direct or referral counseling for abortion or birth control. Abortion foes in San Diego said they feared that the June statement was tantamount to endorsing health clinics without having explicit assurances that the church’s conditions would be met.

Indeed, the late diocesan bishop, Leo T. Maher, vehemently opposed health clinics on high school campuses because he felt that such clinics would provide birth-control counseling, at the least, and abortion referrals, in the extreme.

Although not addressing the Hoover proposal specifically last June, the diocese at the time left open the possibility that it would not oppose such clinics because of assurances that they would not provide abortion or birth-control counseling.

But on Thursday, Rosemary Johnston, director of the Office for Human Life and Development, said the Hoover clinic “cannot be supported” because students might still be referred to off-campus agencies that provide abortion or contraceptive counseling.

“We have to feel comfortable and certain that students will not be referred to such agencies as Planned Parenthood, which advocates contraception and abortion as a solution to teen pregnancy and sexual promiscuity,” Johnston said.

“This doesn’t represent a change from our previous position,” she said. “It’s just that the school district has been inadequate in satisfying our concerns. We would like to know specifically which agencies they’re going to refer students to.”

Thomas Payzant, superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District, said Thursday that he will not allow the Catholic Diocese of San Diego--or any community agency or religious institution--to try to dictate to the district those agencies to which students can be referred.

“The commitment I’ve made to the diocese is that we would include on our list of referral agencies a number (of agencies) that would represent a cross-section of services and philosophies, and it would be up to the students and parents to choose which ones to go to,” Payzant said.

“That’s how it’s done now” when students ask school nurses for referral information, he said. “We have an obligation to provide a range of options.”

Payzant said he has again reassured the diocese that the Hoover clinic would not provide birth-control or abortion counseling on campus.

“It sounds to me as if the diocese is making a condition of unequivocal support their right to review which agencies are on our referral list,” Payzant said. “Certainly my recommendation to our board would be that we not have external agencies or religious institutions dictating to the Board of Education, which has to serve all of the students and all the diversity of San Diego, with respect to referral agencies.”

Countered Johnston: “We are in an area of conflicting values. But we have to speak to our own moral teachings. We can’t be caught supporting either direct counseling, or referrals to agencies that are contradictory to our own moral teachings. And that’s been our position all along.”