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This week on NOW:
The independent judiciary in America is under assault by the religious right, which is pressuring judges when they don’t agree with rulings in cases involving polarizing moral issues like abortion, gay marriage, and school prayer. Juju Chang of ABC News reports for NOW on the debate over so-called judicial activism that has become the new front line of the culture war in America. The report details a case in Florida where a 13-year-old girl in foster care became pregnant and her decision to terminate the pregnancy ignited a high-stakes legal battle when the state stepped in to stop her.
When community activist Shelby Knox of Lubbock, Texas was 15 she pledged abstinence until marriage. But she has become an unlikely opponent of abstinence-only curriculum in schools and an advocate for comprehensive sex education in her hometown, which has some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in the nation. “It doesn't make a girl a bad person to get pregnant. It means she was misinformed,” she says. “It's something that the parents need to take into account that, you know, these are good girls, good kids. They're just not getting correct information.” Knox is the subject of the documentary film THE EDUCATION OF SHELBY KNOX, which gained buzz at the Sundance Film Festival and will be broadcast by PBS on POV on June 21.
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