School Tries to Require Girls to Take Pregnancy Tests

Raising a kid as a teen mom is daunting enough, but one Louisiana charter school’s policy was poised to make things even more difficult. The state-funded Delhi Charter School in Louisiana attempted to mandate pregnancy tests for students, and use positive results to ban students from the classroom in order to uphold “the school’s goals and objectives relative to character development.”  

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According to TODAY.com, this “Student Pregnancy Policy” came to the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana. The ACLU alerted the school that this discrimination is illegal, and threatened to pursue legal action if the policy is not changed by August 16^th.

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Approximately 70% of teen moms overall are unable to complete school, according to the ACLU – that’s without school kicking them out. This practice just stacks the odds against them that much more. Another shocking aspect of the policy is that it does not include repercussions for male students who father children.

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On a more positive note, it seems as though the Delhi Charter School is willing to comply with the revisions. However, it says something that the policy was allowed to exist in the first place. Do you think pregnant teens should be kicked out of school? Leave a comment.