Let’s say you’re a mother at home tending the housework, or perhaps watching some TV. Your daughter Erika is at school.
So is your other daughter, Erin.
At least you think she is.
The phone rings. Someone at your daughters’ school tells you Erin is in a nearby hospital for emergency surgery, and that you should go to the hospital.
“Was she attacked?” you wonder, as you rush from the house to the hospital.
The answer is “no,” although Erin shares one thing in common with those who suffer such a fate – she is a victim. She has been victimized by people in authority who have shown some bad judgment – a teacher, a school principal, a school superintendent, and a doctor – one who performs abortions.
Shortly after you arrive at the hospital, you learn Erin’s surgery is to correct complications resulting from an abortion performed a few days earlier. This is the first time you hear about an abortion, and the first you learn that your daughter had been pregnant.
Angry about the situation, you are further distressed to learn that Erin’s sex-education teacher had a role in the events leading up to the abortion. You also learn the school principal and school superintendent knew of – and sanctioned – the teacher’s actions.
Outraged, you call a lawyer.
Such a case pending in Oroville, Calif., north of Sacramento. The mother’s attorney in the case is working with lawyers at Americans United for Life in Chicago – particularly with attorney Ann-Louise Lohr, who recently spoke with OSV about the case: Preston vs. Thermalito School District.
Lohr recounted details of the case for OSV:
“After the third day of a high school sex-education course, Erin ran out of the classroom, crying,” said Lohr. “She told her teacher (Marilyn Forham) that she thought she might be pregnant. Forhan subsequently took Erin out of school for a pregnancy test, and paid for the test at a family health center.”
Lohr said Erin had been a discipline problem when it came to school work, and that the mother had quit her job to spend more time with Erin. Also, the mother had asked the school to provide detailed daily reports on Erin’s class attendance and progress in school.
The teacher, according to Lohr, admitted falsifying some of the class-period reports for the time Erin was out of class. (Absences were for the pregnancy test, a pre-abortion counseling session, and application for welfare to pay for the abortion.)
Lohr said that Erin’s teacher covered up plans for a Saturday abortion by sending a note to Erin’s mother, asking that Erin baby-sit on a Saturday, then stay at the teacher’s house overnight. The mother approved of what she thought was going to be a baby-sitting assignment.
“The principal (Charles Maggi) and the school superintendent (Leonard Rathbun) knew about this arrangement prior to the abortion, and okayed it, telling Forham to ‘keep us posted’” said Lohr.
“A couple of days later, while in school, Erin had severe pain and couldn’t even stand up,” said Lohr. “She was rushed from school to a hospital.”
Lohr said the case probably will not go to trial until next summer. She said depositions have been obtained from Mrs. Forham and Erin, but that she still needs to take depositions from Erin’s mother, and Erin’s twin sister, Ericka.
“The case is in the discovery stage right now, which means we’re just getting factual information through depositions and interrogatories,” said Lohr. “Then we’ll do some pretrial motions. The case is in the state superior court at the trial level, in Butte County.”
Lohr said, “There’s a chance we will be asking for damages resulting from the follow-up surgery. The figure will be in the millions.”
“We’re saying there was state action in this, so we’re filing under section 1983, which is the civil-rights act,” said Lohr. “We’re saying the state acted in this case because the school district went along with this – to deprive a person of her civil rights.”
Lohr said attorneys for the defendant – the Thermalito School District – are saying, “Based on their willing admissions to everything we were trying to get them to admit to, their approach is that, based on Roe vs. Wade, a woman has a right to choose, and that right is superior to any right of the mother to know what the daughter’s doing in school – even though the mother had specifically asked the school to keep her informed.”
“We’re saying that there’s an interference with the family relationship between the parents and the daughter,” said Lohr.
“They (the defendants) are saying, ‘So what. The girl has a right to choose an abortion – and the mother has no right to know.’
“That’s going to be the real question in the case: whether the rights of the mother of the family are superior to the right to choose,” said Lohr.
“We’re contending the teacher coerced Erin to get an abortion,” said Lohr. “We’re contending Erin wasn’t given enough information so that she could have helped her make the choice. We contend the mother and Erin weren’t given the information to make an “informed-consent’ decision.”
Lohr said she is optimistic about the outcome of the case, despite state-level nullification of many “parental-notification” laws focusing on teen abortions.
“In this case, it was so underhanded – what the teacher and school officials did,” said Lohr. “So much was done behind the mother’s back – the forging of notes and all that.
“That kind of underhandedness is inexcusable. Who knows better about what should happen to a child than the mother?” Lohr asked rhetorically. “Certainly not the gym (sex-ed) teacher.
The mother is pro-choice but she would have discussed the pregnancy with her daughter,” said Lohr. “There’s a good possibility the mother would have raised the baby.”
“I think it’s really good the mother is pro-choice,” said Lohr, “because it doesn’t lok like: ‘here’s this anti-abortion person who is just outraged’”
