A measure in the Connecticut legislature would force school nurses to be trained on the tenets of critical race theory, including “systemic racism, explicit and implicit bias, micro aggressions, racial disparities, anti-blackness and experiences of transgender and gender diverse youth.”
The training is attached to training on endometriosis — an often painful disorder of the tissue that lines the uterus.
H.B. No. 6297 is sponsored by state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest (D), who has a master’s degree in social work and served as the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut.
The first part of the bill would establish a training program for school nurses in which they could obtain continuing education credit.
“Our hope is that if school nurses can have this knowledge when a young person presents in the nurse’s office because they’re doubling over in pain, or is missing a lot of school because of the pain associated with their period, they might be able to say to them, ‘Hey, you might have endometriosis. You might want to get that checked out,’” Gilchrest told Yale News.
While the first part of the bill requires likely important training on endometriosis generally, the second part of the bill injects a racial framework that appears entirely random.
Breitbart News reached out to Gilchrest asking what, if anything, the racialized training had to do with endometriosis and what purpose it serves in the bill.
Gilchrest did not respond to Breitbart News’s request for comment, nor does she appear to address it in the Yale News piece.
She did however attempt to make the argument that women are not the only humans with uteruses — “individuals with a uterus” — but admitted that it is a “predominantly women’s disease.”
“As a feminist who has worked on women’s health and safety issues for quite a while, I was angry,” she told the outlet. “I then started doing my own research and realized that endometriosis impacts one in 10 individuals with a uterus and that, as a predominantly women’s disease, is under-researched, underfunded and there’s just a complete lack of knowledge amongst healthcare professionals about what endometriosis is.”
Medical advocacy group Do No Harm called out the bill for inserting race into a medical issue.
“Having spent several years of my nursing career in rural New Mexico, I gained a wide variety of experience in the field, including school nursing,” registered nurse and Do No Harm program manager Laura Morgan told Breitbart News. “I can confidently state that none of the students who came into the office said that their tummy aches or menstrual cramps were due to systemic racism or implicit bias.”
“School nurses have more important topics to study for their continuing professional development,” she concluded.
Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies.
