DISCRIMINATING AGAINST A PREGNANT WOMAN IN A WOMEN’S STUDIES CLASS:
Stephanie Stewart, an honors student at the Borough of Manhattan Community College on an academic scholarship, was due to deliver her son before the end of the spring semester in 2012. She needed some accommodations because she would not be able to attend every session of her women’s studies class. Stewart figured her professor would be understanding—it was a women’s studies class. But she wasn’t. The professor told Stewart that she wouldn’t be able to make up any tests or assignments she missed due to doctor’s appointments or labor and delivery. “When I received a backlash from her and no support from her, I was extremely stunned. I felt disrespected,” Stewart says. . . .
Though the outcome is a good one for Stewart, the NWLC has seen more and more complaints like hers, says Lara Kaufmann, NWLC’s senior counsel and director of education policy for at-risk students. They started seeing an uptick in complaints when a popular blogger called the Feminist Breeder wrote about her own experience with pregnancy discrimination.
I dunno, if she’d said she had to miss class for an abortion it might have been okay.