Monday, August 13, 2012

Okay Then

A Louisiana charter school is changing its policy on banning pregnant students from the classroom.

Students who get other students pregnant, however, will continue to be banned.

Oh, who am I kidding? Of course the policy only negatively impacted those students with uteri. Via NBC:
"The Delhi school policy says that if a student is suspected of being pregnant, a parent conference will be held and the school will have the right to require female students to take pregnancy tests and refer those girls to a doctor of its choice. Pregnant students can’t attend classes on campus; they must study at home. Girls suspected of being pregnant who refuse to take the test will be forced to study at home or leave school."
Note, of course, the bodily intrusions this policy mandates. Not only are pregnant students banned from the classroom, the school can make a student get a pregnancy test on mere suspicion of pregnancy, and the school can then refer the student to a doctor of the school's choice.

An article in USA Today states:
"No one at Delhi Charter School in rural Louisiana realized there was anything wrong with the policy until the American Civil Liberty Union's state chapter threatened to sue, said chairman Albert Christman."
The intrusion into the bodies and academic careers of people with uteri, but not into the bodies or academic careers of people with testes, is just such a given to the school leaders that of course they don't see anything wrong with it. I mean, what kind of echo chamber was this school board and leadership that "no one" saw anything at all wrong with this policy that it took outsiders like the ACLU, those who consciously think about how liberty and freedom has historically meant different things for different people, to bring the wrongness of the policy to the attention of those who don't think about such things in a critical manner.


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