Pregnant students are kicked out of US schools!

Students are students wherever they are. They deserve love, respect and forgiveness in case if they do something wrong, even if so severe.  I don’t mean to generalize, but I know this happens to students from across the globe. Once they commit the shameful mistake of being ‘pregnant’ – the cause can be anything, rape, intimidated sex, seduction, tempting into consensual copulation… -  they are ridiculed, humiliated, sometimes kicked and what not!

A Louisiana school’s policy of forcing students suspected of being pregnant to take a pregnancy test or get kicked out of school should they either refuse or are pregnant has kicked up a storm in the US.  Civil liberty activists and other organizations are up in arms against this inhuman act.    

It is true that in the US, the reality is a growing number of students are facing pregnancy sometime in their academic career. The National Women’s Law Center is re-releasing its comprehensive new report that shows that schools across the country are failing to meet the needs of pregnant and parenting students, according to reports.

According to the report, says Jessica Pieklo, a Care2 activist,  schools still bar pregnant students from activities, kick them out of school, push them into alternative programs and penalize them for pregnancy-related absences, all of which violate Title IX—the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education—and increase the risk that they will drop out of school. “Recently,  we were outraged over a Louisiana school’s policy of forcing students suspected of being pregnant to take a pregnancy test or get kicked out of school should they either refuse or are pregnant. This is just the latest example of such drastic failures. It wasn’t until the school faced a demand letter from the American Civil Liberties Union and public pressure that it backed off its practice–and not before the lives of a handful of students were already affected,” Pieklo was quoted as saying by the Care2 newsletter.

According to Pieklo, the NWLC report examines the education laws and regulations in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and ranks them based on the extent to which their laws and policies help this vulnerable student population succeed. The majority of states have few or no laws, policies or programs specifically designed to improve outcomes for these students. Our schools can do better and our students deserve better.