SIOUX FALLS, July 13, 2004 (lifeSiteNews.com) - The State Library service of South Dakota has removed links to Planned Parenthood from the library website. The library had declined to comply when a school librarian in Huron requested in April that they remove links to Planned Parenthood Teenwire website and the Kaiser Family Foundation. The bishop of the Catholic diocese of Sioux Falls then asked Governor Rounds to intervene.

In a letter to Rounds, Bishop Carlson wrote, "I trust you will agree that the information found on these links are not only objectionable, but in many instances, they are false. Undeniably, it is sending a harmful message to our youth. I find it extremely troubling that the State of South Dakota would encourage our young women and men to turn to Planned Parenthood for any guidance, whether it be sex education or the intrinsic evil of abortion. Rounds had no knowledge of the problem until Bishop Carlson sent him this letter.

The Library Board promptly complied with the Governor's request that the links be removed. Governor Rounds has also asked to have the 'teen center' sections of the library website temporarily blocked until their content has been checked. Rounds commented, "I think that parents that have kids of 12 to 14 years of age would not want items on that site to be made readily available to their children either on the internet or through connections with, of all places, a website sponsored by the State of South Dakota."

The Library Board has agreed to check the suitability of web content available to children. Rounds, who is a Catholic, said that as a parent he would be 'disturbed' to have his children visiting some of the websites under investigation. He also said he was concerned with the problem of promoting any one specific political viewpoint on a website funded by taxpayers. He said that Planned Parenthood is a political organization that hires lobbyists. "I'm not sure the State should be in the business of promoting a particular cause," the governor said.

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