Censorship. Misinformation. Indoctrination. Parents don’t associate these words with their children’s education, and taxpayers don’t expect such practices to be funded by millions of federal dollars. Yet when President Bush proposed a $39 million increase in federal funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education in his 2006 budget, he asked Congress to do just that. If the president gets what he asked for, the federal government will throw nearly $206 million in the next fiscal year into programs that a growing body of evidence shows are ineffective at best, and dangerous at worst.

Truth. Accuracy. Responsibility. The Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act, introduced last week by lawmakers in both houses of Congress, is the antidote to unproven, misleading, and harmful abstinence-only sex education. Federal abstinence-only programs must focus exclusively on abstinence and are often prohibited from discussing contraceptives except to emphasize their failure rates. REAL programs would teach that abstinence is the only sure way to avoid pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections, but they would also include information about how to use contraceptives to prevent pregnancy and infection. In addition, REAL would require funded programs to provide age-appropriate and medically accurate information and to refrain from using taxpayer dollars to preach religion, a constitutional safeguard that many abstinence-only programs fail to provide.

In the current political climate, the chance that this commonsense legislation becomes law: 0. The chance that abstinence-only programs get a substantial increase: 100.

In a budget that includes the deepest cuts to domestic spending in two decades, including huge reductions to health care programs for the poor, food stamps, and research on chronic diseases, what’s responsible about increasing funding for ineffective abstinence-only education?

According to the most recent statistics, 822,000 15-19 year old women got pregnant in 2000, and each year, approximately 9.1 million 15-24 year olds are infected with sexually transmitted infections, including one-half of all new HIV infections. A growing body of evidence shows that most abstinence-only programs do not help teens delay having sex, and some show evidence of increasing risk-taking behaviors among sexually active teens.

On the other hand, evidence shows that comprehensive programs that provide information about abstinence and effective use of contraception can help delay the start of sexual activity and increase condom use among sexually active teens. Yet there is currently no federal program dedicated to comprehensive sex education. Averting the dollars misspent on abstinence-only education to start-up a comprehensive sex-ed program would be the responsible choice.

Leaving the effectiveness question aside, what about truth and accuracy? A recent review of federally funded abstinence-only curricula prepared by Representative Henry A. Waxman (D, CA) found that more than two-thirds of the programs reviewed distort information about contraceptives, misrepresent the risks of abortion, blur religion and science, promote gender stereotypes, and contain basic scientific errors. Backed by no credible evidence, one curriculum wrongly asserts that 5 percent to 10 percent of women who have abortions will become sterile. Another incorrectly suggests that HIV can be contracted through exposure to sweat and tears. Yet, when lawmakers attempted to add a medical accuracy requirement to one stream of federal abstinence-only funding, the effort fell on deaf ears.

The American Civil Liberties Union knows all too well about the blurring of the line between religion and science in abstinence-only curricula. In 2002, the ACLU successfully sued the Louisiana Governor’s Program on Abstinence for using federal dollars to support religious activities, including Christ-centered theater skits, religious youth revivals, and gospel radio shows. The governor’s program agreed to settle the case and was later ordered by the court to closely monitor the activities of all funded programs and to stop using public money to “convey religious messages or otherwise advance religion in any way.” Despite this agreement, problems persist. Just last month, the ACLU asked a federal court to hold the governor’s program in contempt for using their state-sponsored abstinence-only website to proselytize; a hearing is scheduled in the case next month.

Defending his budget, Bush rightly asserted, “A taxpayer dollar ought to be spent wisely or not spent at all.” In continuing to fund abstinence-only education and in further asking for an increase in spending, the Bush administration has shown that it is not interested in spending wisely or responsibly. When it comes to protecting America’s youth, REAL is clearly the wise choice. Unfortunately, under Bush’s spendthrift approach to sex education, it is precisely America’s youth that will continue to pay too high a price for government irresponsibility.

by Louise Melling, Director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project

May is National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month.

The NM Teen Pregnancy Coalition and the NM Department of Health Family Planning Program will hold a press conference to update the state on the status of teen pregnancy in New Mexico.

This year’s event will be held at the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce on May 6, 2005 from 9:00 am to 10:00 am at 1309 Fourth Street SW. We will present the final information on which counties are on target to meet the Challenge 2005 goal of reducing teen pregnancy by 20% in their county.

Please Join Us!

For more information, please call the NM Teen Pregnancy Coalition at 505-254-8737

***MEDIA ADVISORY*** ***MEDIA ADVISORY*** ***MEDIA ADVISORY***

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
ALBUQUERQUE – At 10 a.m. on Saturday April 30th the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of New Mexico will host a panel discussion entitled “Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder: Faith-based Funding and the Assault on Reproductive Freedom” at the University of New Mexico Student Union Ballroom C in Albuquerque.

WHAT: The meeting begins with the ACLU of New Mexico Annual Report, delivered by Executive Director Peter Simonson. A keynote address and panel discussion will follow examining the implications of faith-based funding in New Mexico for religious liberty and reproductive choice. Suggested $10 donation.

WHO: Keynote Speaker: Julie Sternberg, Attorney, National ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. Her work at the Project focuses on the intersection of religion and reproductive health issues. She led the project’s successful lawsuit challenging the misuse of taxpayer dollars to promote religion in abstinence-only education programs in Louisiana.

Panelists:

Eve Espey, MD,MPH – Associate professor on faculty in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UNM; specializing in the field of family planning.

Tara Ford - Co-director of Pegasus Legal Services for Children and Cooperating Attorney with the ACLU of New Mexico.

Andy Schultz – President and Managing Director of the Rodey Law Firm. First Amendment Religious Freedom Law expert and Cooperating Attorney with the ACLU of New Mexico.

Jane Wishner - President of the Southwest Women’s Law Center and Cooperating Attorney with the ACLU of New Mexico.

WHEN & WHERE: Saturday, April 30, 2005. Registration begins at 9:30 a.m. The program is from 10:00 a.m. to noon. University of New Mexico Student Union, Ballroom C. From I-25 take the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr./Central Ave. exit. Go east on Central about a mile. Turn left into the second entrance into UNM at the light at Stanford.

ACLU-NM: Events - 2005 Annual Meeting
The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of New Mexico invites you to our 2005 Annual Meeting panel discussion:

“Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder:
Faith-based Funding and the Assault on Reproductive Freedom.” Details…

The UNM Humanist Society - The Humanist Society of NM - ACLU-NM

Present

The True Meaning of Church/State Separation

A talk by Edward Tabash, JD, Civil Rights Attorney

Friday, April 22, 3:30 pm
UNM Student Union Building, the Acoma Rm

Saturday, April 23, 10:00 am
UNM Law School, Rm 2406

Edward Tabash is a civil rights attorney and chair of the National Legal Committee for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, as well as chair of the First Amendment Task Force of the Council for Secular Humanism.

Tabash graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.A. from UCLA in 1973 and earned his Juris Doctorate from Loyola Law School of Los Angeles in 1976. He is the son of an Auschwitz survivor, an orthodox rabbi, and has passed from beliefs in Judaism and Christianity to New Age mysticism to becoming a staunch advocate for atheism and minority rights for nonbelievers.

– free admission –
call 292-4375 for more info.

SANTA FE—The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico asked Federal Court Judge Martha Vásquez to declare the City of Hobbs in “substantial non-compliance” with a Court-endorsed agreement requiring the Hobbs Police Department to stop discriminating and to uphold constitutional rights of African Americans.

The motion also asks the court to initiate contempt proceedings for the City’s failure to address a previous finding of non-compliance by Judge Vásquez.

“This is the second time in four years that we’ve had to go back and ask the Court to order the Hobbs police to do what they promised to do in the settlement agreement,” said ACLU-NM Executive Director Peter Simonson. “ACLU-NM will keep going back to court until the department stops discriminating and starts respecting the constitutional rights of African Americans.”

ACLU-NM cooperating attorneys Richard Rosenstock and Daniel Yohalem filed a class action suit on behalf of African-Americans in Hobbs alleging race discrimination and unconstitutional actions in the police departments including 1) searches without warrants, 2) unlawful arrests and traffic stops, 3) the use of excessive force, and the filing of false criminal charges.

In 2001, a settlement was reached that resolved many of the claims against the Hobbs police, and that required the police to take certain remedial actions.

In 2003, the ACLU-NM went to Court asking Federal Judge Martha Vásquez to order the City of Hobbs to comply with the agreement. At that time the Judge agreed that the police had disregarded the terms of the agreement and in 2004 ordered the city to comply, extending the agreement by twelve months.

I want to acknowledge that we are having problems with our main website, www.aclu-nm.org (the blog is fine). We will have this problem resolved as soon as possible and will keep you updated here.

Update 4/21: the site is back online. mjh

NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union today applauded the termination of the “MATRIX,” a controversial interstate information sharing program that combined government and private-sector data and made the results available to law enforcement officials across the nation.

“Another major assault on privacy has been turned back, thanks to the thousands of Americans around the country who helped us to fight this program,” said Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Project. “In state capitols across the nation, in police headquarters, and in media newsrooms, the message was heard loud and clear: the Matrix program is not consistent with the American tradition that innocent citizens be ‘left alone’ by their government.”

In a press release issued Friday afternoon, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which spearheaded the program, announced the program’s shutdown. In 2003, a top Florida police official told the Washington Post that the program was so powerful that it was “scary” and that “it could be abused. I mean, I can call up everything about you, your pictures and pictures of your neighbors.”

“We at the ACLU feel proud to have led the effort against this program,” said Steinhardt. “This may be the biggest victory for privacy since we and our allies from across the political spectrum shut down Total Information Awareness,” he added, referring to a Pentagon program run by Admiral John Poindexter that, like the Matrix, would have combined information from disparate sources and then combed through it using computer algorithms to search for allegedly suspicious behavior. Congress, alarmed about TIA’s Orwellian nature, shut it down in 2003.

“We’re under no illusions that the long and hard fight against the growing surveillance society has been won,” said Steinhardt. “Even here, part of the Matrix program will apparently continue to be available to individual states. But it is worth pausing to celebrate an important victory in that battle. These are major programs that have been shut down, and their termination should give heart to everyone who supports the fight to make use of technology without giving up the privacy we’ve always enjoyed here in America.”

For more information on the program, go to www.aclu.org/matrix.

We believe that Governor Bill Richardson over-stepped his bounds in granting a half-day leave today to all state employees in remembrance of Pope John Paul II.

“Over the last few days our office has received numerous complaints from people who objected to the state using taxpayer dollars to recognize a world figure who is chiefly religious in his meaning and importance,” said ACLU-NM Executive Director Peter Simonson. “In fact, several of those people identified themselves as state employees. The governor should know that his order offended many New Mexicans–some because they deplore government involvement in religion; others because they know that their religious leaders will never get equal treatment.”

Simonson said that his organization consulted with local and national civil rights experts to determine whether the Governor’s order violated constitutional guarantees of church-state separation and was vulnerable to legal challenge. He said there was no consensus on the legal merits of such a case, but “all of the attorneys we spoke with agreed that the order abridged the constitutional principle that government should not be seen as endorsing a particular religious perspective.”

Governor Richardson’s order complements a national presidential order to lower U.S. flags to half-mast in remembrance of the Catholic leader.

“We don’t take issue with the symbolic gesture of lowering the flag,” Simonson said. “But giving people a half-day off is an extraordinary measure. The State of New Mexico has never shut down on behalf of a world leader who has died. Not for Ronald Reagan. Not even for Yitzhak Rabin after he was assassinated for signing a peace agreement between Jordan and Israel.

“All that distinguishes the Pope from these noteworthy world figures is his religious importance. Even if the governor claims that his order is not intended to recognize the Pope for that purpose, I dare say most New Mexicans will interpret it otherwise. In the court of common sense, the governor has pulled a quick one on the Bill of Rights.”

SANTA FE – Governor Bill Richardson signed a genetic protection bill into law yesterday which will ban discrimination based on a person’s genetic code in employment, housing, and credit.

Representative Danice Picraux sponsored H B 183: The Genetic Privacy Act, which sailed through the House with a vote of 65-0 and the Senate with a vote of 38-0. This win is a culmination of years of commitment and advocacy for genetic protection on behalf of Representative Picraux.

“We applaud the New Mexico State Legislature and the Governor for recognizing the importance of providing safeguards against genetic discrimination by passing this cutting edge legislation,” said ACLU of New Mexico’s Executive Director Peter Simonson. “The genetic revolution has a vast range of potential implications for American life. New reproductive technologies are profoundly affecting the lives of women and children and represent new categories of reproductive choices, and biotechnology is transforming health care, insurance, employment, and the criminal justice system, and raises profound legal issues associated with genetic discrimination, privacy and intellectual property,” added Simonson.

The ACLU nationally and in New Mexico is a leading advocate for strong privacy laws. On August 21, 2004, the ACLU of New Mexico hosted a Data-Privacy Conference in Santa Fe that sparked a groundswell of interest on privacy issues in our state.

A coalition of organizations, led by the ACLU, committed to protecting privacy supported several bills this legislative session. Some of these groups include the New Mexico AARP, BioLaw Group, Foundation for Open Government, League of Women Voters, New Mexico Press Association and others.

This law recognizes that it is a violation of civil liberties for employers, landlords, or financial institutions to base important life decision of an individual upon genetic traits of a particular race, religion, alienage, sex or other group because it would have disparate impact upon that group

Decisions should be made on the basis of individual ability and character, not on the basis of stereotypes or generalizations about the groups to which an individual belongs. The fact that some, or even a majority, of the members of a particular group have a particular genetic trait does not mean that all members of the group have that trait.

Fellow Patriot,

Congress is beginning to debate the Patriot Act’s flaws and needs to hear from you today. As commmitted defenders of our nation’s core values, we need to urge Congress to fix these flaws and help ensure the preservation of our liberty.

I have included below a draft letter that you can edit and send to your Members of Congress. Please tell them why you, as a conservative American, have serious reservations about many of the Patriot Act’s provisions.

In the coming days you will hear the administration talk about the benefits of the Patriot Act. We agree that much of the Patriot Act is necessary to provide law enforcement with the resources they need to defeat terrorism, but we remain very concerned that some of its provisions go beyond that mission and infringe on the rights of law-abiding Americans, in ways that raise serious constitutional and practical concerns. For example, Section 213 of the Patriot Act allows government agents to secretly search through people’s homes and businesses and seize their personal property without notice for days, weeks, months or perhaps ever.

The emergence of international terrorism on our shores cannot be allowed to dissolve the carefully constructed structural foundations for preserving our liberty that are required by the Constitution, that very document our soldiers have sacrificed and continue to sacrifice their lives to defend.

Even Attorney General Gonzalez, in his recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, recognized that at least some provisions in the The USA PATRIOT Act might need to be changed. But this will not happen unless you become involved and help us in this critical task.

Please send the letter below to your Members of Congress and start asking them to fix the Patriot Act. Only by standing up for our rights can we preserve them.

Sincerely,

Bob Barr

Chairman, Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances

http://www.checksbalances.org

——————————————————

You can use the following letter to compose an email to your members of Congress. You can find their websites and contact information on the www.House.gov website or the www.Senate.gov website.

As your constituent, I urge you to support fixes to the Patriot Act, such as the SAFE Act. This legislation was recently introduced and would protect those checks and balances that have made America the foremost defender of individual liberties in the world.

I believe that America is stronger than many think. I believe that our political system can still maintain our security while maximizing the freedoms that are our birthright. The SAFE Act would fix several provisions of the Patriot Act, including those authorizing secret search warrants and an overbroad definition of domestic terrorism, which could sweep in political protesters.

I also believe Congress should resist the current push to eliminate the expiration provisions in the 2001 counterterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act. Congress should use the debate about the sunsets as a springboard into a broader discussion about the health of checks and balances post-9/11. This broader discussion should include the expansion of federal surveillance authority with minimal or non-existent judicial review.

We need a discussion about whether the courts adequately supervise the federal government’s surveillance authority and whether the FBI is focusing its investigative resources on terrorists, instead of on everyone else. Government data mining shrinks the zone of privacy that people have traditionally enjoyed and airport security measures that intrude on passenger privacy might not be the most effective ones.

Once again, I urge you to oppose renewal of the sunset provisions in the Patriot Act. I also urge you to support legislation, such as the SAFE Act, that would fix problems in the Patriot Act.

Attorney General Gonzales will lead off a series of Senate and House hearings starting Tuesday into provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that expire Dec. 31.

He will be the opening witness before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday and will kick off a House Judiciary Committee session Wednesday reviewing whether 16 provisions that expand government surveillance designed to catch terrorists should be extended, dropped or strengthened.

That will be followed by eight House Judiciary subcommittee hearings lasting into May, ending with a full committee session.

The reauthorization debate will pit civil libertarians against the administration, which wants the surveillance provisions extended or changed to give law enforcement more power. Without elaboration, Gonzales said last month that law enforcement might need more authority. “Part of the debate about reauthorization is whether additional tools can be added to the arsenal,” he said.

Privacy advocates and civil libertarians oppose more tools for eavesdropping or domestic spying, although they back most sections of the law aimed at curbing foreign terrorist activity.

Within weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress rushed the bill to President Bush, who signed it into law. Since then, critics have complained that the law allows the FBI to search library records without notifying individuals.

But under fire, the Justice Department told House Judiciary Chairman Sensenbrenner in September 2003, that no library records had been searched.

Lining up against added government powers is an alliance of conservative and libertarian groups headed by former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. In a March 22 letter to Bush, the group urged him “to reconsider your unqualified endorsement of the most intrusive, unchecked powers temporarily granted by the act.” The organization – Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances – is asking Congress to oppose some sections of the bill not expiring.

For example, it wants to strike “sneak and peek” authority that allows government agents to secretly search homes and businesses – but delay giving advance notice as was the case under the prior law. Authority to collect personal information, including library books, medical information, goods and firearms that might be relevant to terrorism or secret intelligence activities also is opposed by pro-gun and libertarian organizations.

“There are few issues that are more important to this committee and the American people than protecting our citizens’ precious civil rights and civil liberties while continuing the battle against terror,” said Judiciary ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich.

Erna Fergusson Library Community Meeting Room
3700 San Mateo NE (near Comanche).

The meeting will begin at 5:45pm.

ACLU-NM: Central New Mexico Chapter