aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Saturday, June 18, 2005

Boy’s bogus boast used as grounds for school pregnancy test

Amanda Marcotte points to this story of a 15-year-old girl and her father who have filed a federal lawsuit claiming that a high school nurse forced the girl to take a pregnancy test: 

Nurse Dyanna Eastwood called the girl to her office Jan. 11 and told her that a student at another school had claimed he impregnated her, according to the lawsuit, which claims the girl’s privacy and constitutional rights were violated.

The girl denied that she was pregnant and said she never had sex with the boy, but Eastwood insisted that the girl take the test, according to the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Austin. The girl’s lawyer said she was not pregnant.

The story quotes the nurse:

“Search and seizure—alrighty then,” Eastwood said Thursday when reached at her New Braunfels home.

“I remember the incident,” Eastwood said. “Is that how it went down? No, of course not.”

She declined to comment further, saying she wanted to seek legal advice.

And what of the principal?

When the girl’s father asked Principal Chad Kelly about the pregnancy test, the father was handed a piece of paper indicating that “the nurse performed the pregnancy test pursuant to the school district’s interpretation of section 32.003 of the Texas Family Code,” the lawsuit states.

Part of that section states that a child may consent to medical treatment by a licensed physician if the child “is unmarried and pregnant and consents to hospital, medical or surgical treatment, other than abortion, related to the pregnancy.”