A New Hampshire teacher working for a school that serves students with disabilities has been fired after it was learned that she drove a pregnant student to get an abortion.
The child’s parents were not informed of the abortion, NH Journal reported June 6, citing a New Hampshire Department of Education investigative report.
The redacted document said the teacher had spent weeks counseling the student about her “options.”
The teacher claimed she was out sick with food poisoning the day she took the student to the clinic, the report said.
“[The teacher] stated that the student didn’t have anyone to support them so they offered to go with them,” it said.
The teacher was fired after the incident was discovered, the report said.
According to the Boston Globe, which said the teacher’s last name “was included in the metadata for one of the documents,” she was listed as having worked for Regional Services and Education Center Inc. in Amherst, New Hampshire. It did not name the teacher.
The Globe said the agency is a nonprofit that runs small schools for students in grades 5-12 with special needs or learning disabilities.
It said the teacher was put on administrative leave until her contract ended, at which point she was dismissed.
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The year in which she was fired was redacted in the report.
The Globe said the teacher had since been hired by the Jaffrey-Rindge Cooperative School District in southern New Hampshire, which voted in early May to give her a job beginning in August.
Teacher in N.H. fired for secretly helping pregnant student access abortion services https://t.co/PgopAOsZNU
— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) June 24, 2024
Performing an abortion for an unemancipated minor under 18 is illegal in New Hampshire unless parents are provided 48 hours’ notice. Massachusetts allows 16- and 17-year-olds to have an abortion without parental consent.
The state report did not reveal the age of the student.
The incident only came to light on April 22 when New Hampshire Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut posted an Op-Ed on his department’s website of allegations he believed needed to be investigated.
“How should the department respond when a parent has reached out to express concern that a teacher had called a student a ‘White supremacist’ and confiscated their Trump flag while ignoring the student wearing the Pride flag? … Or when an art teacher, rather than teaching art, introduces children to Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ for Kids, without consulting with parents or school leadership,” Edelblut wrote. “Should we look the other way?”
“Or when, allegedly, an educator lies by calling in sick so they can take a student — without parental knowledge — to get an abortion. Should we turn a blind eye?” he said
Elected officials expressed concern about the incident.
“I am horrified to hear that a teacher in our New Hampshire schools felt the right way to help a pregnant student who felt unsupported in her pregnancy was to research abortion facilities and call out sick to take a student to an abortion rather than to help her speak with her parents and find support from her family,” Republican state Rep. Erica Layon said, according to NH Journal.
“Parents have the right to know everything that is happening to their child in school. Keeping secrets or going behind a parent’s back is never good public policy,” Republican state Sen. Tim Lang said.
“It’s not good for the child, either,” Lang said. “It teaches children, by the actions of ‘trusted adults,’ it’s OK to be deceptive, which is not creating good citizens for our future.”
