It may come as a surprise to CFN’s under-30 readership that the first major prolife
battle in the late 1960s with AmChurch’s new post-Conciliar bureaucracy, the
National Conference of Catholic Bishops/U.S. Catholic Conference in Washington, D.C.,
was not over birth control or abortion, but over so-called “sex education.”
Never mind that the Anti-Life Establishment has always viewed “sex education”
as the primary weapon in their campaign against the proliferation of people. On March
20, 1969, Dr. Richard Day, a former National Medical Director for Planned Parenthood
(PP), explained to physicians of the Pittsburgh Pediatrics Society that the purpose of sex
education was “to get kids interested in making the connection between sex and the need
for contraception early in their lives, even before they became active.”2 Again, on May
3, 1973, just months after the Supreme Court Roe Vs Wade decision legalizing abortion
in the United States, PP’s President, Dr. Alan F. Guttmacher, in an interview with the
Washington, D.C. Evening Star and Daily News claimed that the only avenue PP had to
win the abortion rights battle was “sex education.” “I think we’re going to establish the
individual’s complete control over conception, and that will win the battle for abortion if
we act wisely,” Guttmacher explained.3 But the American bishops weren’t listening.