Friday, November 9, 2012

OCSB Students to Meet with Abortion, Prostitution Advocates

Three local Ottawa highschools (Holy Trinity, St. Francis Xavier and St. Joseph's HS) will be taking some of their students to El Salvador from Feb 11-19th, 2013. The trip's itinerary for the first two highschools can be found on page 55 here, and St. Joseph's can be found on page 54 here.
  
Our students will be meeting with the following three NGO's during their trip,

1. Concertation de Mujeres (Holy Trinity, St. Francis Xavier)
2. CRIPDES (All three schools)
3. Equipo Maize (All three schools)

Each of these groups advocate for positions that are contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Faith.

Concertations de Mujeres

Concertation de Mujeres is a member of a feminist coalition called Concertacion Feminista Prudencia Ayala, which published a document titled, "Feminist Platform 2009-2014", that lays out their beliefs and political demands. 

The document can be found here. The document is in Spanish but can be translated easily using translate.google.com. Once there, click on the words "translate a document" below the box on the left side. Then you click on the "Choose File" button. Once the file is chosen, google will begin the process of translating the entire document for you. If you have any problems, please contact us and we would be happy to walk you through it.

As a start, you can confirm that the NGO the students will be visiting (Concertation de Mujeres) is a co-signatory of this document by going to the last page (of the Spanish version) where they are the 12th group listed.

The following are a list of quotes from the document:

page 8,
Legally guarantee safe conditions to perform voluntary interruptions of pregnancy without any risks to the health and life of the woman; decriminalize abortion and legalize therapeutic abortion.

page 9
Investigate the side effects of contraceptive methods and promote the distribution of reliable ones, fostering the use of condoms as the only method that does not negatively influence the health of women and oblige the co-responsibility of men and women in sexual intercourse. 

Access to condoms in all health care establishments.

page 17,


Recognition of Sexual work as such, and its inclusion in the Labour Code as any other type of work.

page 19,


Reform the Family Code to recognize diverse types of families , including lesbian families, and equality of rights between heterosexual and lesbian couples, be they married or life-long companions.

Ensure the right of adoption for lesbian couples.

CRIPDES

CRIPDES promotes contraception. You can read a report about their support for contraception by reading page 4 of a document they put out in 2010. The relevant excerpt has been pasted below,


Towards the end of the workshop, a represenative from Las Melidas made a presentation on family planning and birth control, talking about the different kinds of birth control that exist and emphasizing that the rhythm method is not reliable. Older women expressed the desire to have wanted to know this information earlier, to have avoided so many pregnancies. The young women present were very interested in the issue and paid close attention,and they were congratulated for wanting to put these methods into practice.

Equipo Maize

Equipo Maize focuses a portion of its resources on producing sexual education material for children. Reading their website makes it fairly clear they don't promote a Catholic view of sexuality. For those that would like to read the relevant webpages, please do the following:

1. Go to http://itools.com/tool/google-translate-web-page-translator

2. Type in either of these web addresses for translation:
http://www.equipomaiz.org.sv/SexTodo.html
http://www.equipomaiz.org.sv/TalleresTodo.html


Should Catholic schools be facilitating meetings between our children and groups that advocate for positions contrary to the teachings of our faith? Absolutely not. Parents know this, as should those entrusted with our children's care. 

We urge all parents and Catholic ratepayers to contact the respective principals and trustees to firmly request that our children not meet with these problematic groups.


Contact information:

St. Joseph's Highschool
Sue Arbour, Principal,  email: Joseph.High@ocsb.ca
Alison Baizana, Trustee, email: Alison.Baizana@ocsb.ca

Holy Trinity Highschool

Jennifer Oake, Principal, email: HolyTrinity.High@ocsb.ca
Ted Hurley, Trustee, email: Ted.Hurley@ocsb.ca

St. Francis Xavier Highschool
Michael Curry, Principal, email: FrancisXavier.High@ocsb.ca
Alison Baizana, Trustee, email: Alison.Baizana@ocsb.ca

Director of Education, Julian Hanlon, email: