An Educational Scam and Abortions Going Underground

ECOT's Educational Scam
Two reviews by the Ohio Department of Education for 2016 and 2017 have found that the charter online school system, ECOT, had over-billed Ohio taxpayers by $80 million for thousands of students that it couldn't show were meeting the department's enrollment standards. As a result, the state ordered the school to begin paying back almost $4 million per month in school funds, which ECOT claimed it was unable to do. ECOT has been given almost $1 billion in taxpayer money that would otherwise have gone to local school districts. [1]

According to Ohio law, charter schools are required to provide students with at least 920 hours of "learning opportunities" per year -- about 25 hours a week -- and those who miss 105 consecutive hours have to be kicked off a school's rolls and potentially face truancy proceedings. Records from ECOT's recent legal fight show that as recently as the 2015-2016 school year, students could be legally counted as enrolled, even if they they only logged into the ECOT systems but never accessed learning materials.

According to the New York Times, ECOT has a graduation rate of just 40 percent and produced more dropouts than any other school in the nation.

From 2006 to 2016, charter schools almost tripled their enrollments nationwide, from 1.2 million to 3.1 million. Students, in fact, weren't required to participate in online classroom learning at all, according to another ECOT official's testimony regarding the 2015-2016 school year. [2]

President Trump's FY 2019 budget provides $1.4 billion in additional funding for school choice programs like charters, even while cutting billions of dollars from the Department of Education's overall budget.

Abortions Go Underground
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, "white male doctors consolidated their professional power in part by sidelining female and often nonwhite midwives and other community healers." "[The] newly formed American Medical Association spearheaded efforts to criminalize abortion, which historians believe was part of a larger campaign to monopolize the market and restrict competition, including from midwives. Physicians, almost exclusively men, publicly questioned the morality of abortion -- and by extension, the morality of the lay practitioners who provided it."  "As long as women have had unwanted pregnancies, other women have helped them resolve the problem." "Today, as abortion rights are restricted at an unprecedented rate -- between 2011 and 2016, more than 160 clinics closed -- this informal network of nonmedical providers is responsible for a small but significant number of abortions nationwide." [3]

Abortion restrictions and lack of access have grown like Topsy in the United States, illustrated by rural Pennsylvania, where 85 percent of the counties are without an abortion clinic. Over the past decade, Arizona has passed extremely restrictive abortion legislation. One law stipulates that surgical abortion can only be provided by a physician; a second law forbids physician assistants from dispensing abortion drugs. In 2008, there were ten Planned Parenthood clinics that provided abortion services. Now, there are only four. Also, patients face mandatory waiting periods and parental consent laws. [4]

Other abortion developments of note include: Wisconsin - Early this month, a bill was heading to the governor's desk that prevents public workers from using their health insurance to pay for abortion care. South Carolina - Both chambers passed a bill that would ban doctors from telling patients that the state-mandated lies they must recite are politically motivated and inaccurate. Iowa - The Senate passed a bill that would outlaw nearly all abortions, with no exceptions for rape or incest. Florida - The House passed a ban on the safest, most common method of second trimester abortions, forcing doctors to provide subpar care. Mississippi - On March 6, by a vote of 35 to 15, the State Senate passed House Bill 1510, which would prohibit  abortions after 15 weeks, except for medical emergencies and "in cases of severe fetal abnormality." The Guttmacher Institute said the bill "is based on the assertion, which is not consistent with scientific evidence and has been rejected by the medical community, that a fetus can feel pain at that point in pregnancy." The Mississippi governor has since signed the bill. South Carolina - Last month, the State Senate's judiciary committee approved a so-called "Personhood Act," proposing a sweeping ban on abortions, with no exceptions for medical emergencies or cases of incest and rape.

Guns and Abortions
Dana Milbank, the Washington Post syndicated columnist, wonders why abortions are restricted more than guns, while abortions are declining and gun deaths are rising. "Even speech is limited if it endangers life. Why shouldn't there be reasonable restrictions on guns, too?" "Even though 92 percent of abortions take place in the first trimester, the pro-life movement takes aim at late-term abortions." Milbank adds that for many pro-lifers, "opposition to abortion is deeply held morality. But it is no stretch to say that those who accept the routine mass murder of innocents are not truly pro-life." [5] I would call the pro-life movement, the anti-choice movement.

ADDENDUMS:
*President Trump's FY 2019 budget proposes a $25 million cut in school safety activities; elimination of a $400 million grant program for bullying protection, mental-health assistance and the like. Deep cuts are also proposed for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and National Institute of Mental Health.

*NBC reports that it was three pro-abstinence appointees, including HHS chief of staff Victoria Huber, who led the effort to end the $213 million Teen Pregnancy Program, alleging that it has had either a negative or no impact. The program has bipartisan support in Congress.

Footnotes
[1] James Pogue, "Least Likely to Succeed," Mother Jones, March/April 2018.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ning Lisa-Schultz, "New Abortion Underground," Mother Jones, March/April 2018.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Dana Milbank, "Where are pro-lifers on Parkland?" The Albuquerque Journal, February 24, 2018.