Last week, thousands of students across the country participated in a walkout against gun violence and in favor of gun control, following the deadly shooting in Parkland, Florida last month.
Now, one high school student in a suburb near Sacramento, California is organizing a protest against another issue — abortion.
Rocklin High School Student Brandon Gillespie said he hopes the pro-life protest will “honor all the lives of … the millions of aborted babies every year.”
He was inspired to organize the protest by his history teacher, Julianne Benzel.
Benzel was put on leave earlier this month after two students and a parent complained about comments she made concerning the pro-gun control walkout.
“I opened up the discussion … if schools across the country are going to allow one group of students to get up during class and walk out to protest one issue, would they still give the same courtesy to another group of students who wanted to get up and walk out to protest? And I used the example of abortion,” she told Fox News.
Julianne Benzel: "Would they still give the same courtesy to another group of students who wanted to get up and walk out to protest?" pic.twitter.com/sbV3vdkFOI
— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 16, 2018
Brandon said he wants to test whether the school is open to all political points of view or only those that align with a certain ideology.
“I would like to see if there really is a double standard and what will come of that,” he told CBS Sacramento.
Some students have pushed back against the idea, including school newspaper editor Naeirika Neev, who wrote a piece titled “Enough is Enough” for the school newspaper’s editorial page.
“Due to the First Amendment, those who wish to hold protests on abortion, or any other matter, have the freedom to do so. However, the controversy of abortions has nothing to do with the school administration or the school environment. Therefore, it is unreasonable for such protest to take place on school ground, during school time and unreasonable to make such comparison.”
However, pro-life group Live Action noted, “According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, 18 percent of all abortions in the state are from teenage pregnancies; thus, to say that abortions have nothing to do with students in a local high school is clearly far from reality.”
Brandon has encouraged other students to get the word out about the protest by using the hashtag “life.”
According to Brandon’s Twitter page, the pro-life protest is set to take place on April 11.
See the local news report below:
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