We watched a funky '70s or '80s anti-abortion film in Religion class in school when I was about 15. I went to a Christian Brothers, all-boys secondary school in the Republic of Ireland. This would have been about 1996 or 87. It wasn’t very persuasive.
I guess she never really poured over her cites!
I don’t remember much about what they said about abortion in health class, however. I have a very clear memory, however, of getting into a sort of argument with my social studies teacher over abortion - me wondering if there wasn’t maybe some reason to have them, like when the mother absolutely did not want to have the child or maybe couldn’t give it a good life, and he almost yelling about how any life was better than no life.
I say sort of because I was a fairly timid teenager, and was cowed easily. Plus, I’d never seen this teacher yell before. It scared me a bit and to this day I don’t think he was very professional.
I went to a single-sex, private all girls school in the UK (left around 1994) - like you it was not a religious school, but had morning assembly etc (I think you have to be a Brit to understand this). I can honestly say that your experience was very strange. I can’t even remember abortion coming up as a subject, let alone being shown a graphic video about it. Admittedly, my memories of RE (and Social Studies) are kind of vague, but I would have remembered something like that!
My vote goes to your RE teacher having a cause and a platform and no one getting around to stopping him. Did none of the parents complain?
Hi Neeps - I only began to think of it a strange a few years ago. I dont remember my parents being informed or asked. Now i am actually quite angry about it, but thought maybe it was common at the time. Thats the reason for this thread.
I hated R.E. Despite the teacher being ok, homework would consist of ‘translating’ interminable bible script into some sort of modern English story. Overlong, un-stimulating and painful. This used to take hours - time i could have used learning things.
Luckily, they also taught me how to think critically - leading me to be pro-choice and aethiest. Good job !
I went to public schools in the US from the age of 10 and the subject really never came up in any of our classes.
My sister went back to Catholic school for one year of high school. I don’t know if they were made to watch films, but I remember her bringing home an anti-abortion leaftlet she was given (which contained such gems as: “Q. But what about if she’s raped? A. Pregnancy from rape is very rare. Out of 1,000 women raped in Minnesota in 1981, none became pregnant”).
A young friend of mine here in Ireland, who went to a “national” (public but Catholic) school, recently told me that she was taught in school that if you walk by an abortion clinic you can hear the dead babies screaming.
My first question would have been: “If they’re dead, how can they scream?”
You can say the same thing about altar boys when you walk past the Rectory.
And I used to woned why they called it “rectory” – in hindsight :p, it was soooo obvious.
This is (Irish) Catholicism, it’s not supposed to be logical.
I went to an ex-grammar school (now a secondary school designated science college status, but the spirit was still very grammar school-y, not unexpected as the school was founded in 1572!), in England. A lot of the older staff were around when it was still a grammar school I think, or at least were pupils there when it was.
The assembly and R.E once a week sounds familiar, but the closest to your abortion experience we got was a little debate on the morals of it in R.E and the ‘you can get this if all else fails’ side of it in sex education too.
Your experience sounds very Catholic, was your R.E teacher Catholic? My SO’s mum went to an all girls Catholic school and was shown graphic pictures of abortions and the like to scare them away from pre-marital sex.
I have no consciousness and I must scream.
I went to Catholic school (in Canada) and as far as I can remember they never even mentioned abortion.
I went to an all-girl Catholic school in Ireland and we were shown these videos too. Really old and really out of date if I remember.
Mid seventies in an Australian public school we had one hour a week religion class and one student fainted during the film .
I went to a public school, but it was before Roe vs. Wade, so abortions were illegal. Instead, they showed us a Caesarian birth of triplets. All I remember is that the class jock passed out.
I went to Catholic school (K-9), but fortunately all we had to do was write a pro-life essay in 8th grade. It had to be about abortion, yes, but also anti-death penalty and “Youth-In-Asia.”
It was pretty hard to come up with something. I considered the “you should accept the consequences of your actions” angle, just to use SOMETHING, but a friend pointed out that yeah, that’s not very realistic. Another friend complained about how she wouldn’t want to be called a mistake all her life. I mentioned something like that in my rough draft. My teacher wasn’t too amused. 
I think I wound up just phoning it in. (As did most of my friends). It was pretty lame.