Dive Brief:

• The Gilbert Public Schools Board voted (3:2) to remove a page from “Campbell Biology: Concepts and Connections” that deals with Mifepristone, a FDA-approved "morning after" pill that terminates unwanted pregnancies up to seven-weeks after conception.  
• The board has left it to each high school's discretion on how they choose to get rid of the page, suggesting options ranging from marking the words out or covering them up to simply ripping the page out entirely.
• According to KTVK-TV, a conservative Christian group approached Superintendent Christina Kishimoto about the page over the summer, but the board is saying the decision was made in light of a 2-year-old law mandating all public schools give “preference, encouragement and support to childbirth and adoption as preferred options to elective abortion."

Dive Insight:

As we've learned through the banning of books, making something "illicit" only makes it more desirable. Won't a freshman's interest be piqued if they suddenly see a page has been ripped out, or that its words have been blacked out? That was the rationale of board member Jill Humphreys, who voted against the page removal plan. Even beyond the literal ripped out page, won't students hear about the decision in media coverage? It sounds like a lot of ninth-graders are going to be Googling "Mifepristone."

They may not have to, though: MSNBC TV Host Rachel Maddow created a webpage where her team posted the redacted material. She also sent a letter to the district's honor's biology students encouraging them to check the site out so they wouldn't miss any "part of your biology textbook that the crusading religious group and the Republican State Senators and the conservative majority on your school board no longer wants to allow you to see."