LIHUE – Students are organizing a nationwide walkout day to raise awareness of the 60,000,000 unborn children who have been aborted since the 1973 Roe Vs. Wade ruling, according to a press release from the Family Research Council
The demonstration also seeks to ensure that school officials give different viewpoints the same treatment.
A grassroots pro-life organization on Kauai is calling for residents to participate in the event at 10 a.m. Wednesday.
“I’m very much pro-life and want to stir up this community,” said Annette Oda. “I know it’s going to be a difficult initiative, but it needs to be done.”
Oda said there are many like-minded people on Kauai.
“We cannot be silent about it, (abortion),” she said. “I just want something to be done. I want people to be moved to stand up for the cause.”
Oda said she’d like to expand the idea to include violence, depression, suicide, abuse and discrimination.
The nationwide walkout is in response to a California history teacher Julianne Benzel, who, started a discussion with her students, as to whether school officials would also allow students time out of class for a demonstration to raise awareness about lives lost to abortion.
Due to the discussion, Benzel was placed on two days of administrative leave.
Within that time, one of her students asked the school principal if they would be given the same accommodations as students who walked out on March 14, in remembrance of 17 students killed in Florida a month prior and to protest gun laws.
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Bethany Freudenthal, Courts, Crime and County reporter, 652-7891 bfreudenthal@thegardenisland.com
