Pro-life students plan abortion protest after school shooting walkout

Students at Rocklin High School (RHS) in Rocklin, CA, a suburb of Sacramento, are planning a walkout to protest abortion. This walkout comes on the heels of last week’s 17-minute walkout in many public schools protesting guns. The pro-life protest, students say, originated with a teacher’s innocent question.

CBS reports that RHS AP history teacher, Julianne Benzel was placed on administrative leave after questioning what would happen if a walkout occurred for a different issue. Abortion was one that came to her mind. The story reports:

Benzel’s intent of opening up discussion on the history and organization of protests, an appropriate topic for history class, led to complaints, and Benzel was placed on leave. That leave only lasted two days, and she was welcomed back to her classes, but one student took the question seriously and said he “would like to see if there really is a double standard and what will come of that.” Brandon Gillespie, the protest’s student leader said the point of the protest is “[t]o honor all the lives of aborted babies pretty much. All the millions of aborted babies every year.”

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Ironically, Benzel wasn’t intending to make the comment about abortion itself; it was the first example that came to her, she said, as she posed a critical thinking question to her students, as The Blaze reports:

But that didn’t sit well with the editor of the school paper, who authored a staff editorial. Naeirika Neev, wrote in the editorial:

Neev also said:

While neither Benzel nor Gillespie equated abortion with violence using guns, as Neev accused in her editorial, the fact remains that both are relevant issues to high school students, albeit different ones. According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), 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. The chances are that more lives at RHS will be lost to abortion than to guns. Gillespie, however, is not attempting to equate the two issues — he simply decided that a protest against something he and other students believe in was something he wanted to organize.

Neev is correct that students may hold any protests they want, under their First Amendment rights, and much of the history teacher’s line of reasoning was to cause students to consider various viewpoints and reasons. As Breibart reports, “Benzel appeared on Fox and Friends on Friday and told host Steve Doocy that the hypothetical abortion protest had come up during a class discussion in preparation for Wednesday’s national student walkout for gun control”:

READ: U.S. and U.K. studies: Sex education, birth control access don’t reduce teen pregnancy

The story adds: “Benzel said that two students and one parent complained, and she was placed on leave as a result.”

The school told CBS 13: “The teacher was not penalized or placed on leave based on her viewpoints. The actions were taken due to complaints from parents and students.”

Meanwhile, on the The Glenn Beck Radio Program, Benzel praised Gillespie as  “unbelievably brave and courageous” for taking the question to heart. Benzel said:

Benzel is back at work, and Gillespie, who hasn’t set a date for the protest, has a meeting with the principal set for Friday in order to discuss the protest itself.