Abortion Has Nothing to Do With Education

The National Education Association’s Representative Assembly passed a statement during their annual meeting in Houston, Texas over the weekend that supports a “right to abortion.”

New Business Item 56 that was adopted by the assembly reads:

Through existing media channels, the NEA will honor the leadership of women, non-binary, and trans people, and other survivors who have come forward to publicly name their rapists and attackers in the growing, international, #MeToo movement.

Furthermore, the NEA will include an assertion of our defense of a person’s right to control their own body, especially for women, youth, and sexually marginalized people. The NEA vigorously opposes all attacks on the right to choose and stands on the fundamental right to abortion under Roe v. Wade.

While the NEA has supported “reproductive freedom without government interference” in the past, they claim to have never held a pro-abortion policy and have defended unmarried, pregnant teachers’ right to have children in the past.

This weekend the representative assembly says they stand on “the fundamental right to abortion under Roe v. Wade.”

What does abortion have to do with education? Absolutely nothing. Their support of abortion is why the Supreme Court’s ruling last year in Janus v. AFSCME was vitally important. No public employee should be coerced to pay agency fees.

“The First Amendment is violated when money is taken from non-consenting employees for a public-sector union; employees must choose to support the union before anything is taken from them,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion.

Stances like the one NEA took over the weekend is why many teachers do not support the NEA and their state affiliates. Is this statement respectful of pro-life teachers? No, it is a slap in the face of their pro-life membership which, I’m sure, will see a further decline.

Perhaps the NEA will one day realize that abortion does not advance their stated vision of “a great public school for every student.”

Until then they are nothing more than a partisan, left-wing advocacy group and any pro-life teacher would be a fool to become a member.