Please take action immediately on the following:

Dear Betsy,

If you make one call this afternoon, please make it to Senator Eddie Goodall at (919) 733-7659 to voice your support of the two-track version of the Healthy Youth Act, House Bill 88. The most effective time to make the call will be between 1 and 3pm today, so go ahead and mark your calendar, set an alert on your phone or computer, set your alarm clock or kitchen timer and get ready! The call will only last a minute, but it can make a huge difference in the lives of kids in our schools.

To get you up to speed: Last week in the Senate Committee Mental Health and Youth Services, a new version of the Healthy Youth Act that diminishes choices for parents and will subject all children to biased and inaccurate information was unveiled. The new version does away with the two-track version allowing parents to decide whether they want their child to receive abstinence until marriage or abstinence based comprehensive sexuality education. Instead, the bill now requires that all children be taught the currently mandated abstinence program, which is filled with biased, medically inaccurate material, and then tacks on some teaching about pregnancy prevention and sexually transmitted disease prevention at the end. To make matters worse, while the current draft allows parents to opt out of the comprehensive portion of the program, they may NOT opt their child out of the possibly biased and shame-based abstinence until marriage program.

This bad version of the Healthy Youth Act (House Bill 88) passed committee, but has not been brought to the Senate floor yet.

We need you to call Senator Goodall at (919) 733-7659 TODAY, June 16th, between the hours of 1 and 3 pm and ask them to support parents' choice and the two-track system by restoring the House version of the bill.

You will be part of a major state wide effort by a number of organizations that have signed on to support the Healthy Youth Act in its original form. We hope to flood the North Carolina Senate with calls today and make a statement that we must stop playing around with the health of young people!

Please call today. If you cannot make the call, you can also send a quick e-mail to Senator Goodall from their website. (Find their site here: http://eqfed.org/equalitync)

Thank you for setting aside a minute of your Tuesday to make a difference for North Carolina's students!

-Rebecca

PS--Got two minutes and want to help students even more? Urge your representative to support the School Violence Prevention Act here!