Mother Outraged After Daughter's Injected With Birth Control Implant on School Trip
An Oklahoma mother is voicing her anger after her daughter's school organized a trip to a local health clinic in which her daughter was given a three-year birth control implant without her approval.
As reported by Fox 23, Tusla mother Miracle Foster was dismayed to learn that workers at the nonprofit health clinic Youth Services of Tulsa injected a three-year hormonal birth control implant underneath the skin of her upper arm during a trip that was organized by the Langston Hughes Academy for Arts & Technology.
The incident happened after Foster's daughter attended a sex education lecture at her school. After the lecture, Foster's daughter and other students expressed interest in learning more and the school arranged for Youth Services of Tulsa to pick them up and transport them to their clinic.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Although the school's Principal, Rodney Clark, called and received Foster's permission for her daughter to go to the clinic, Foster says she thinks Clark and the school should have given her more information about the trip and explained that receiving an implant would have been a possible outcome of the trip.
"I did not expect this," Foster told the local news outlet as she cried. "That was not a choice. That was the last choice I had for her and we had discussed birth control. I was going to make an appointment for us to both go in and get something."
Foster explained that she thought she was simply allowing her daughter to go on a sexual education field trip only to get information.
"My child went on a field trip and she came back with this in her arm," Foster said, adding that she feels the school is responsible. "Now this is in her arm for three years."
"Had I known that this field trip was for her to get that done, I would not have allowed her to," she added.
Clark told Fox 23 that he doesn't consider the trip to the clinic to be a "field trip" but an annual "sex education session."
Youth Services of Tulsa, which has been partnering with the school since 2013, is a program that offers students sex education information and transportation from schools during school hours to a clinic to receive information and, in some cases, contraception.
Strong confidentiality protections in place under Title X federal law makes it so parental consent is not required for children as young as 12 to receive family planning services.
"I just feel like my rights as a parent were violated," Foster asserted.
Clark issued the following statement:
"This was not a field trip. Youth Services of Tulsa does an annual in-service on Sex Education. They offer students an opportunity to contact them on their own for more information. The parent gave her child permission to leave the school. Under Title X, once young people are at the clinic and are of reproductive age, they can make decisions on their own without parental consent. As you can understand this situation involves a minor and we do not release information about students. Nevertheless, the student was well within their rights of Title X which is a federal guideline that provides reduced cost family planning services to persons of all reproductive age."
Valerie Huber, president of the sexual risk avoidance (abstinence only) advocacy organization Ascend, told The Christian Post on Wednesday that parents have the right to be outraged that "schools are complicit with a teen-sex-promotion agenda that sends the message that pregnancy prevention is the only concern with teen sex."
"Consistent with an optimal public health massage, school sex education information and skills should give teens the tools to wait for sex," Huber stated. "The social science research is compelling that a teen can avoid pregnancy and still be at risk for negative life outcomes, if they engage in teen sex."
"From what we know of this situation, risk-free decision-makings is not a meaningful part of what is offered to students," she added. "This is troubling indeed."
