5th Grade Classroom Political Discussion

I'm going to share with you guys the email from my daughters teacher and my response.

Parents,

I wanted to give you a heads up on a discussion we had today in class so you can talk with your child about it.

I was given a wonderful United States map with all of the electoral votes on it, so today we were discussing the Electoral College and how the race is tightening according to recent polls. One student in our class mentioned Barak Obama is for killing babies and other students agreed and said that was abortion. I told all of the students this is a topic they needed to discuss with their parents. However during the third debate Barak Obama did say he was in support of adoptions and that led us into a wonderful discussion on adopting.

Your children have brought in marvelous discussion topics about the upcoming elections and are very excited about running the voting at Galileo for the rest of the school. I do appreciate all of the conversations you have had with them at home to help each of them understand our government system better.


Wow...fun for you. So I would not be surprised if mine was not part of the discussion. A few days ago she asked me to explain how abortion works and that lead to a history of abortion, and yes I did tell her some of the early history of planned parenthood which is not highly publicized because the founder had some very scewed notions about minorities and poverty that would turn your stomach. She asked what partial birth abortion is and also about born alive babies. We discussed that Senator Obama is very against life saving measures for aborted babies born alive, which is stark contrast for a bill he did support for premature care. Quality of life= desirable life?

Because of our family circumstances, with Joey, these things are close to our heart. We were told by the genetics clinic that we had a fifty fifty chance of a reoccurance of microcephaly. I had contact through support groups with families whose second child had a more severe form, and some who were profoundly affected and lived only briefly. Many passionate discussions there about termination. When we went to schedule a vasectomy for these reasons, we found out I was pregnant with Justine. Surprising considering the years of struggle and fertility drugs it took the first time. The boys were 18 months old at the time. When I announced this to the online support group(hundreds of families) many were adamant that only a crazy person would go through with this. Yep, Crazy in love with my children. At one visit, my OB smiled and said"This is that visit where I am supposed to legally tell you you can do that test I know you don't want" I said"That's why your my doctor, you know better than to ask." My daughter was probably the most heavily ultra sounded child ever! He checked her head and brain every visit almost. My doctor was extremely attached to her and requested I bring her in for many visits.

My daughter and my son, are both considered disposable by many. Too risky, too much trouble. What a sad world that so many will miss out.

And now they have found a liscencephaly 1 gene that they are 99% sure is Joe's issues. This means our chance of reoccurance is less than 1%. She is more than worth it. There are a lot of kids walking around (and many who can't walk) that should never be thought of as a decision.

So yeah, pretty near and dear...
Jen Bach