One thing I’m getting used to is people censoring (or trying to censor) the speech of others and then claiming it’s not really censorship but something else: avoiding hurt feelings, obviating “hate speech” or so on.

A good example is a report in Yahoo News that the school board of Gilbert, Arizona (covering 39,000 students) has removed two pages from a biology textbook (Campbell Biology: Concepts and Connections) because those pages discuss birth control, including contraception and the morning-after pill. I believe the textbook is for high-school students, and it’s not clear whether the two pages have been physically removed from the book (I suspect they have, since the word “excised” is used), but this is in response to a legal group’s concerns that students might actually learn about how to have sex without the possibility of having babies. And that apparently violates a state law:

An Arizona law signed by Republican Governor Jan Brewer in 2012 says that taking into account “the state’s strong interest in promoting childbirth and adoption over elective abortion,” school programs must present those as the preferred options. The alliance said the materials, which have been used in the district since 2006, present elective abortions as a viable option for students while making no mention of childbirth or adoption.

Now the news report is scanty, but it suggests not that the text promotes or even mentions abortion, but mentions the morning-after pill as a form of contraception. Most people know that that that pill doesn’t cause an abortion, but prevents an egg from being released, so a zygote isn’t even formed, much less implanted.

The opposition, of course, comes from conservative religious people, and that’s also mentioned in the news report (“Some conservative Christians believe life begins at the moment of conception”). Of course, there is also no “conception” with either birth-control pills or the morning-after pill.

It’s bad enough to try to keep this information from kids, but worse when you claim it’s not censorship:

“By redacting, we are not censoring,” board member Julie Smith told 12 News in Phoenix. “This school district does offer sexual education classes. If we were censoring, we would not offer anything on this topic whatsoever.”

My online definition defines “redact” as “censoring or obscuring (part of a text)”, so thats a distinction without a difference. And to say that there’s no censorship because, after all, they do teach sex education, is simply lying. They know what they’re doing; they’re just trying to pretend it’s not censorship. Ms. Smith, at least, needs to read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.”

h/t: Mark