California Public School Teacher Who Showed Abortion Video Resigns Position

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Mar 3, 2008   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

California Public School Teacher Who Showed Abortion Video Resigns Position Email this article
Printer friendly page

RSS Newsfeed

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 3
, 2008

Milpitas, CA , DC (LifeNews.com) — A California public school science teacher who was placed on administrative leave after showing a pro-life film has resigned his position. First-year teacher Randy Yang showed the film, The Silent Scream, to five eighth-grade classes at Russell Middle School and came under heavy criticism.

Yang aired the film in January following completion of work one day in the chemistry classes he teaches. The movie was shown just one day after the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision allowing virtually unlimited abortions.

He reportedly let his class decide on watching a film on the water cycle or on abortion and that the classes voted to see the pro-life movie.

Yang issued his resignation effective June 30, but the San Jose Mercury News indicates it’s not certain whether he will return to the classroom before the end of the school year.

Superintendent Karl Black would not give the newspaper any further details, citing confidentiality rules, but confirmed the school board accepted his resignation on February 12.

Xhynah Cabugao told the San Jose paper that some of the students were upset by the film.

"They’re like, ‘Ewww, that’s gross, why do we have to see that?’" he said. "Everybody was kind of disgusted."

The newspaper said Yang is not a tenured teacher and instructed students to avert their eyes if they didn’t want to watch the film.

Luis Gonzales, assistant superintendent of Milpitas Unified School District, told the newspaper that Yang has not been in class since the day he aired the movie.

"We are conducting an investigation," Gonzales said. Yang "showed a video that we felt was inappropriate. It was not part of the eighth-grade science curriculum."

In October 2006, a Florida public school teacher was suspended after he showed his students a video on abortion that featured graphic pictures.

Marc Greenblum, an art teacher at the Downtown Academy of Technology and Arts, a charter school run by the Broward County School Board, made a homemade video to show his 10 and 11 year-old students.

It contained abortion photos but also scenes of the Holocaust, 9/11, and the Ku Klux Klan.

The video also apparently featured the picture of baby Samuel Armas reaching up from his mother’s stomach to touch the hand of a doctor performing a fetal surgery on him.

Some students and parents complained to school officials about the video but Greenblum said he had no regrets showing it.