ARTICLES

Child Advocacy, USD Style

University of San Diego law professor Robert Fellmeth, a 1970 Harvard Law School graduate, started USD's Children's Advocacy Institute in 1989 with Sharon Kalemkiarian. In all of the institute's promotional materials and annual reports -- which enumerate the group's collaboration with local schools, the placement of its interns in county offices, and the laws it lobbied through the legislature -- one important bit of information is left out: Kalemkiarian is married to San Diego school board president Ron Ottinger. No surprise, then, that the USD institute lobbied successfully for a law requiring middle schools to teach "parenting" courses; got the job of writing the course curriculum (not neglecting sex, birth control, "alternative families," and other issues); and then obtained grants to print and distribute it.

California Wellness Foundation, a major supporter of the Children's Advocacy Institute, funds an array of anti-family causes. They are, in turn, funded heavily by the Packard Foundation. (Information posted on the Wellness Foundation's web site describes its Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Initiative: the cure, according to them is more abortions and more condoms). As part of the initiative, the foundation gave $100,000 to Reproductive Health Technologies to promote "emergency contraception" (wherein a very early abortion is induced by overdosing on birth control pills). The Wellness Foundation also funds several March of Dimes offices (to search and destroy "defective" fetuses) and numerous Planned Parenthood offices, including a $600,000 grant to Planned Parenthood Federation of America in San Francisco to "strengthen and expand the infrastructure of Planned Parenthood family planning clinics and health services throughout California."

The fall 1994 edition of the Children's Advocacy Institute's Child Advocate News contained the "good" news that "the First District Court of Appeals upheld a minor's constitutional right to privacy in seeking an abortion" (a decision recently overturned by the State Supreme Court.) Other issues of the newsletter list the activities of such groups as the California Birth Defects Monitoring Program, the California Women's Law Center (which promotes "reproductive rights" according to newsletter), the California National Organization for Women, the March of Dimes and more. All these groups participate in "Children's Roundtable" meetings, headed by Fellmeth and the USD staff to collaborate on children's "advocacy" projects. Major funders of USD's Children's Emancipation Clinic are ADVANTA Mortgage Corporation USA and the Streisand Foundation.

According to the 1995-6 Children's Advocacy Institute annual report, before participation in the clinic, students must complete Fellmeth's course, "Child Rights and Remedies." While working in the clinic, students are supervised by Kalemkiarian, attend weekly seminar classes by her, and work as an interns in either the Office of the Public Defender or with CAI staff pushing legislative issues.

According to the October, 1997 issue of another Children's Advocacy Institute publication, CAI News Notes: "On September 19, University of San Diego President Alice Bourke Hayes bestowed a 'recognition-based' University Professorship on CAI Executive Director Robert C. Fellmeth. The yearlong designation recognizes faculty who have made 'outstanding, balanced, cumulative career contributions supporting the mission and goals of USD.'"

-- L.P.