I can't really think of any "good" way to find out your teenage daughter is pregnant, can you? But the shenanigans at one charter school in Louisiana certainly ranks up on the list of "worst ways" to discover you're about to be a grandmother. When officials at the public school suspect a student is pregnant, they force her to get a pregnancy test.
Oh, and if she refuses or if she tests positive, the poor kid is kicked out of the Delhi Charter School. Pardon the rather crass response here: but are these people friggin nuts?
I'm going to say it again: I don't want my daughter ending up a teen mom. I would like her to have the advantages that come with being a grown woman with a career before the baby fairy comes a callin'.
But life happens. Kids happen. And if it came to pass, here's how I would want it to go down: I'd want her to take the pregnancy test at home ... not with some judgmental physician chosen by the school (part of Delhi's rules) hovering just outside the bathroom stall. She's sure to be under enough stress finding out she's pregnant; she doesn't need more.
What she would need is me, her mom, there to comfort her and help her start to plan our next steps as a family. And you had better believe that plan would include doing everything possible to ensure she stayed in school and got her high school diploma.
Pregnancy still ranks as the number one reason teenage girls drop out of school. The burden high school dropouts put on the economy is extraordinary -- by some estimates it's as much as $8 billion on the shoulders of the American taxpayer -- and then you have to add in the emotional costs. It's bad for the teen, bad for her baby, bad for the community. And yet, surveys of those who dropped out have shown the majority would have stuck with it until graduation if they'd just had some adult support to make sure it happened.
What's happening in Delhi, Louisiana right now is being challenged by the ACLU for its likely illegality because the school receives public funding. But this type of discrimination against public teens shouldn't be practiced anywhere -- even private schools -- unless the message we want to send our kids is "we wish you the absolute worst in life." Who really wants to tell their kid that?
What would you do if your kid's school forced her to take a pregnancy test?
Image via hairgeek/Flickr
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Comments 133
And seriously WHAT happens to the darn BOY!!!!??? the female gets punished because she has to carry the child but the boys get to go on learning like nothing ever happened even though most teen dads will not stick around and most teen dads will not pay child support so in the long run the poor mother has to struggle on her own with a baby and now no education and that child is going to suffer too with no help from the dad because all he did was stick his penis in her he didnt ask her to get pregnant. Or i put a condom on but no one ever showed me how to put it on right or what size i need to but so it broke or fell off. But he gets to just go on living his life as normal and the cycle will start over with the child too.
There is NO CHANCE I'm letting my children go to school. I will do anything in my power to provide them with the best education, AT HOME. I will home-school them, by myself, with my husband's help and when needed, by getting private tutors, because THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! I remember being weighed when I was in elementary school, which as an overweight child, made me feel extremely bad. But PREGNANCY TEST? ARE YOU FUCKIN KIDDING ME? Dear god... What's next? Telling them to take of their knickers and giving them a vaginal exam?
I completely agree with the4mutts!
Also, what if a girl was raped? All she would need is the school exposing her clearly unwanted pregnancy (which she might have been planning to end) and adding more to her suffering.