Are You Pregnant?

I knew a woman once, (Ok, a wife, I’m ashamed to admit), who possessed an exceedingly meddlesome know-it-all disposition combined with a big bellicose mouth – a toxic combination for sure.

While vacationing for two weeks on the Island of Cozumel Mexico one winter, lounging by the pool along with several other guests at a seaside hotel, I heard her call out to someone standing several feet away on the opposite side:

“When are you due?” she inquired rather loudly.

Half asleep on my lounge chair, I opened my eyes a crack to see what was going on.

“What?” replied a 30’s something lady in a two-piece black swimsuit.

By this time all eyes of the other guests were staring in our direction directly at my wife.

“WHEN ARE YOU DUE?” she bellowed out even louder than before.

A short pause ensued during which I knew right away that something wasn’t right.

“I’m not pregnant,” the mortified woman retorted tersely, “… just fat.”

A heavy silence followed.

“Oh,” my wife muttered, “sorry.”

It was a moment I shall never forget for the rest of my life as perhaps the most excruciating embarrassment ever experienced. I just covered my face with my hands and sighed, desperately wanting to disappear.  

Of course, my wife had absolutely no business demanding of a perfect stranger, in front of several other perfect strangers, private information about her current reproductive condition.  

It was unforgivable.

This bad memory was prompted by the latest news from the ACLU about a Louisiana public school demanding of female students suspected of being pregnant that they take a pregnancy test. Under school policy, those who are pregnant or refuse to take the test are kicked out and forced to undergo home schooling.

“Welcome to Delhi Charter School, in Delhi, Louisiana, a school of 600 students that does not believe its female students have a right to education free from discrimination. According to its Student Pregnancy Policy, the school has a right to not only force testing upon girls, but to send them to a physician of the school administration’s choice. A positive test result, or failure to take the test at all, means administrators can forbid a girl from taking classes and force her to pursue a course of home study if she wishes to continue her education with the school,” according to the ACLU which has asked them to suspend the policy deemed a blatant violation of federal law and the U.S. Constitution.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs provides that schools may not exclude any student from an education program or activity, “including any class or extracurricular activity, on the basis of such student’s pregnancy, childbirth, false pregnancy, termination of pregnancy or recovery there from.”

The policy also violates the U.S. Constitution Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause.

What is the reason for this policy? Why?

It’s against the law. It’s unconscionable. It’s embarrassing. It’s unforgivable.

Public school administrators simply have no legitimate business meddling into the reproductive status of female students. It defies my understanding as to how the statist bastards could come to think that they could ever do such a thing in a free society.

Women in the United States of America, at least in theory, enjoy a constitutional right to procreate and may not be treated differently than male students on the basis of sex.

Thank goodness for the ACLU and more power to them.

They have good reason to settle the question. The government should not ever have the power to ask of free women:

Are you pregnant?