The teacher, identified in court records as Jane Doe, says she did not try to persuade the student, identified in court records as Student A, to have an abortion, which she said occurred in the fall of 2023.
“It was very important to Doe that she provided Student A with access to information and resources to make an informed decision, but she did not influence Student A in her decision. Doe wanted Student A to be empowered to make an informed decision about her own health care and expressed to Student A that she would do what she could to support her regardless of her decision,” the teacher’s attorneys wrote in the lawsuit, filed Monday, June 24, in Merrimack County Superior Court in Concord, the state capital.
After the school learned of the incident, they dismissed her the following week.
The teacher said state education officials investigated and asked her to relinquish her teaching license, but there was never a hearing before she was notified on June 17 that her teaching license had been revoked.
In addition, the teacher claims that the state’s education commissioner, Republican Frank Edelblut, published an article in April referring to her that she describes as misleading.
“How should the department respond,” Edelblut wrote in the article, before describing several cases of what he considered poor behavior by educators, including: “… when an educator allegedly lies by calling in sick to take a student – without the parents’ knowledge – to get an abortion.”
