A New Hampshire teacher has been fired after she secretly escorted a pregnant special needs student to an abortion clinic.
The female teacher, who has not been named to protect the identity of the student, admitted to her employer that she faked a sick day for the mission.
She told staff she had food poisoning but instead drove a student to the medical facility, according to court documents.
The teacher was listed as working for Regional Services and Education Center Inc, a nonprofit based in Amherst, according to the Boston Globe.
The umbrella institution serves grade five to 12 students with special educational needs and disabilities across several schools in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
It comes after New Hampshire’s Education Commissioner and Frank Edelblut aired the allegation in an opinion piece he penned in April called ‘Thank God someone is looking out for the children’.
While slamming a litany of issues in the school system, he questioned ‘should we turn a blind eye’ when ‘allegedly, an educator lies by calling in sick so they can take a student – without parental knowledge – to get an abortion?’
He also called out ‘school counselors who encourage students to transition their gender without involving a parent’ and a ‘mentor teacher who is drinking on the job’ while ‘other educators turn a blind eye’.
Edelblut is a former GOP candidate for governor who last year expressed disappointment over the defeat of ‘parental rights’ legislation which would have led to greater transparency for parents into what goes on at schools.
State officials opened a probe into the teacher’s alleged failure to separate the personal lives of the students from her role as their classroom educator.
Abortion is legal in New Hampshire for up to 23 weeks and six days into the pregnancy. There is no suggestion the abortion in this case was illegal.
Court documents say the teacher involved told investigators she helped the student to ‘determine how far along they were’ so they ‘knew what options they’d have available’.
She found a ‘safe’ place for the procedure and talked it through with the student, before offering to accompany them because they ‘didn’t have anyone to support them’.
But when her employers found out, she was placed on administrative leave through the remainder of her employment contract, at which point her role will end.
Letters to the teacher from the State of New Hampshire Education Department show they accuse her of ‘failing to properly supervise and abide by ethical standards regarding student boundary protocols with a student under your care’.
The school has been providing special education services for more than 40 years.
It comes as abortions hit their highest level in 10 years despite bans on the procedure in more than a dozen states.
A report released in March 2024 by reproductive health firm Guttmacher Institute showed that there were 1 million abortions in the US in 2023, the equivalent of 16 per every 1,000 women.
That was up 10 percent from the 14.4 per 1,000 in 2020 and the highest since 2014, when the rate was 14.6 per 1,000.
The rise is largely being driven by medical abortions, which can be ordered from pharmacies online and soon-to-be in person, though they are illegal in over a dozen states that have banned abortion.