REGINA, Saskatchewan (LifeSiteNews) — The Minister of Education for Saskatchewan has publicly banned Planned Parenthood from presenting in schools, after images of pornographic flashcards given to students were shared online.
On June 22, Education Minister Dustin Duncan told media outside his office that Planned Parenthood has been suspended from all presentations related to health and wellness courses in schools across Saskatchewan.
Duncan promised he “will be directing Boards of Education administration to suspend for the time being the work in schools of Planned Parenthood as it relates to their involvement in health and wellness courses, as well as the material that they have produced, or they’re affiliated organizations have produced.”
Under Duncan’s direction, the Ministry of Education will review curriculum and documents related to health and wellness classes, to ensure they are age appropriate.
Additionally, Duncan instructed the Ministry to review the process of consulting parents to keep parents informed of health and wellness curriculum being presented to their children.
“That directive is being issued this afternoon,” said Duncan, adding that the Ministry will begin to work on it immediately.
According to Duncan, the decision comes as a direct result of Planned Parenthood providing students with a deck of pornographic cards from A-Z with every letter relating to a sexually explicit term as part of a sexual health presentation to ninth graders at Lumsden High School.
This is the kind of extreme sexual content that was shown to Grade 9 students at Lumsden High School during a Planned Parenthood presentation. Parents are outraged. This kind of insanity being peddled in our public schools must end immediately. #skpolihttps://t.co/Dq2c2w5ouE pic.twitter.com/FPuNeM59tT
— Saskatchewan United Party (@SaskUnitedParty) June 22, 2023
“The material in question, certainly I believe as Minister of Education and frankly as a parent, is completely inappropriate to be in a classroom, has no part of being in the classroom,” Duncan declared. “So, we want to make sure that that material is not going to be a part of the resources that will be provided to students.”
The deck of cards has sparked outrage on social media, as parents question why children are being shown pornography in schools.
According to an email obtained by Saskatchewan United Party, the Lumsden High School did not apologize for failing to review material accessible to students, claiming the cards were “not in the scope of the Grade 9 health curriculum.”
This is an email from the principal of Lumsden High School, sent to parents following the presentation.
There has been no apology to parents from the school for its failure to properly vet this material, which students were exposed to. #skpoli pic.twitter.com/DoUe4cTSkd
— Saskatchewan United Party (@SaskUnitedParty) June 22, 2023
Planned Parenthood Regina’s executive director, Julian Wotherspoon, claims that the cards were not intended to be part of the presentation.
“The resource was in a bag of other resources and it’s basically a big box we take to every event we go to, and so it ended up that one of the students grabbed a copy of that and took it home,” Wotherspoon attested.
“The internet exists, meme culture uses some of these words. They hear their friends using some of these words to be shocking, but they don’t necessarily know what they mean,” said Wotherspoon.
“It wasn’t ever a tool that we use in schools. It had nothing to do with the presentation that we were doing but it is a resource that we carry at Planned Parenthood,” he added.