(LifeSiteNews) — The Iowa State Board of Education is finalizing rules to implement recent legal reforms to the education system, including implementation of lessons on unborn children’s development and removal of references to “gender identity” in school policies.
KCCI reported that the rules include implementing a new state of requirement that children in grades 5-12 be shown visual aids (which cannot come from pro-abortion groups) demonstrating “the humanity of the unborn child by showing prenatal human development, starting at fertilization” in human growth and development classes; and another re-wording various education policies to comply with the legislature’s removal of “gender identity” as a protected class in the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
Speaking in support of the gender changes, the Christian group Inspired Life has said that they preserve the primacy of parents as “responsible for guiding their children’s understanding of gender and sexuality according to their values and their beliefs” while schools instead focus on academic fundamentals such as math, science, history, and reading.
The public will have the opportunity to weigh in on at a public meeting December 30 before final adoption at a later meeting.
The indoctrination of children with left-wing ideology on sexuality, race, and other agenda items has long been a major concern in American public schools, from libraries to drag events to classroom materials to even “transitioning” troubled children without parental input. Many schools have also displayed hostility to the rights and employment of individual teachers who refuse to go along with such agendas.
The Trump administration has taken steps to depoliticize public education, including by ordering the elimination of federal funds to schools that continue diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and by reversing the Biden administration’s infusion of gender ideology into Title IX rules.
Meanwhile, despite the clear-cut scientific facts and medical consensus that individual human beings are alive starting at conception, the United States remains far from a pro-life consensus. Many pro-life activists and initiatives, such as Live Action’s “Baby Olivia” project, hope that fetal development education could play a vital role in reversing that trend, by putting the reality of preborn life before young Americans at a scale far wider than voluntary pro-life activism and outreach can cover.
