Pro-lifers will be gathering to protest the National Education Association’s (NEA) support of abortion this week in Colorado.
The 3.1 million-member National Education Association (NEA) is the largest labor union in the United States. It represents public school teachers and support personnel; faculty and staffers in colleges and universities; retired educators; and college students preparing to become teachers.
The NEA’s mission is allegedly “to advocate for education professionals and to unite our members and the nation to fulfill the promise of public education to prepare every student to succeed in a diverse and interdependent world.”
The group, headed by Bob Pawson who founded Pro-life Educators of America, will be at the NEA Teacher Convention in Denver, Colroado as 10,000 NEA delegates from 50 states arrive.
“The NEA union leadership has policies & practices supporting abortion..As taxpayers/parents and children/students, you have legitimate voices in chastising the NEA leadership for involving the union in the abortion issue at all! Abortion is one of a vast number of social, moral, & political issues which NEA’s ‘leaders’ have adopted policies and engaged in activism which have nothing to so with representing teachers in collective bargaining. Their gathering in Denver is YOUR opportunity to take them to task and deliver a message of reprimand to that ‘leadership’ cadre,” Pawson writes.
A resolution from 2013-2014 shows a support for “reproductive freedom” code for abortion on demand:
I-17. Family Planning
The National Education Association supports family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom.
The Association urges the government to give high priority to making available all methods of family planning to women and men unable to take advantage of private facilities.
The Association also urges the implementation of community-operated, school-based family planning clinics that will provide intensive counseling by trained personnel. )
“How wicked & stupid for the leaders of a teacher union to support the killing of future students. Ironically, charging teachers DUE for supposedly “protecting” their job security,” Pawson points out on his events page.
In 2009, the NEA defeated a measure that would have had it take a neutral stance on abortion. The bylaws amendment would have invalidated NEA Resolution I-16 which says the NEA “supports family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom,” which is a code word for abortion.
The defeated proposal would have had the NEA take “no position” and would have prohibited the group from filing a Supreme Court brief supporting Roe v. Wade if the Supreme Court ever considers a case that would overturn the decision allowing virtually unlimited abortions throughout pregnancy. It would have also prohibited the NEA from “lobbying for or against legislation regarding the dissemination of birth control information, the funding of birth control procedures, or the sale of birth control products.”
In 2008, pro-life advocates protested at the national NEA convention at the Washington Convention Center. The protest pointed out how the union has upset pro-life advocates many times over the years.
Most recently, the NEA received criticism from pro-life advocates when it hosted a forum featuring a late-term abortion practitioner. The National Education Association came under fire for allowing a radical pro-abortion group to use its building to host a forum featuring controversial late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller.
LifeNews.com reported on the NEA-hosted pro-abortion forum and the criticism of it. Later, NEA Assistant General Counsel Michael Simpson slammed the criticism as “untrue and unfair.”
The NEA has also come under fire for attacking abstinence education programs.
ACTION: Send your complaints about its pro-abortion position to the National Education Association. Go to https://www.nea.org/home/827.htm
