Posted on 02/20/2006 4:26:47 PM PST by Mr. Brightside
Anti-Abortion Group Backs Fired Pregnant Teacher
Group Says Catholic School Is Encouraging Abortion by Firing Woman
By JAKE TAPPER and AVERY MILLER
Michelle McCusker, 26, got a job teaching pre-school at St. Rose of Lima, a Catholic school in Queens, N.Y...
(She) became pregnant. She decided to keep the baby and informed the school early in the school year.
/snip
The school — backed by the Brooklyn Diocese, which oversees Catholic churches in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens — fired her.
McCusker and the New York Civil Liberties Union are suing the school, claiming gender discrimination... "This is a policy that the church applies to women but not to men."
/snip
But what's unique about the case at St. Rose of Lima is that an anti-abortion group has sided with Michelle McCusker, claiming that the Catholic school was essentially encouraging abortion.
/snip
Serrin Foster is president of a group called Feminists for Life. She talks about McCusker at anti-abortion rallies, saying taking away a woman's job and income for being pregnant is anti-life.
"If you take away the resources, you could unintentionally drive a woman to having an abortion," said Foster — who mentions McCusker's story when she speaks at anti-abortion rallies.
"It is not pro-life to take away the resources and support that women need and deserve to bring children into this world," Foster says. "The appropriate response for the employer when they found out she was pregnant, is to say, 'Congratulations,' and, 'How can I help?' "
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Somehow, I think I find it even more repugnant to have a Catholic-school teacher that would consider having an abortion rather than carrying a child full-term just so she could keep a job teaching at a Catholic school.
Sadly, I don't know how you could screen for such things.
Fascinating. Now, that does cast a different light on this...
However, I think the school should have stated they were firing her for living with her boyfriend vs for being pregnant outside of marriage. If it were just pregnancy outside of marriage, I agree with the others that she should be put in a non-student-facing job for the duration of the pregnancy.
But her obvious disregard for the rules puts a sour taste in my mouth.
In my humble opinion pedophile priests and those who have shielded them are by far much worse than a single woman who made a mistake like getting pregnant. This woman gets fired and Cardinal Bernard Law is sent to Rome. I guess all sin IS NOT equal huh?
At least the teacher was demonstrably having *heterosexual* relations.
It is too bad they cannot apply the same standard to Bernard Law.
But look what I did find:
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/nation/13239713.htm
Now 26-year-old Michelle McCusker is suing, saying she was unfairly bounced just a month into her first full-time job as a pre-kindergarten teacher at St. Rose of Lima.
< big snip >...Two days after McCusker, a Catholic who graduated from St. John's University in the spring, told Andersen that she was three months pregnant, she lost her $30,000-a-year job and health insurance.
She was pregnant when she took the job. Bet she was aware of it too.
And I bet that as a Catholic, nothing in the moral guidelines in that personnel handbook was at all vague to her.
I'd love to know what sort of groups she belonged to at St. John's.
Last I heard, "standard maternity leave" in New York kicks in at two weeks before the due date and continues til six weeks after the birth.
So you're saying she should be on her own NOW? Cool.
I'm sure the pre-schoolers she taught would have been quite enthralled.
Agreed. She should have been put on some sort of maternity leave and have private counseling, along with the father, about their future and the future of their child. The Church does have an obligation to help people and encourage the couple to marry. Instead, it's easier to judge the unwed mother and throw her out in the street with no childbirth benefits or means of support for herself or her unborn child. This is mercy?
Agreed. Some of the diehards around here would stone the Virgin Mary for adultery. She was an unwed mother, too, don't forget.
Thanks for that comment. I love the Holy Mother... we all need to be humble and remember to forgive and pray for guidance.
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