Pro-Life News in Brief >BY; Hospital Sued for Woman's Death during Abortion of Down Syndrome Baby >TX; Abortion on Demand May Be Legalized in Switzerland >TX; Abortion Death Ship Comes Closer to Launch.

Pennsylvania School District Bans Abortion Referrals by Employees

Responding to a lawsuit against a neighboring district, the North Penn School District in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, adopted a new policy April 19 asserting that employees and contractors "shall not become involved in obtaining an abortion for any ... student." The school district is only the second in the nation to approve such a regulation.

"We are an academic facility ... not a clinic," Donna Mengel, chair of the school board committee that initially approved the policy, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "I don't want to see our role expand in the area of social issues."

The committee began discussing the policy in November 1999 after the parents of a 17-year-old student, who obtained a secret, out-of-state, second-trimester abortion without their knowledge, sued neighboring Hatboro-Horsham School District. Howard and Marie Carter alleged that their daughter Stephanie, then 17, got an abortion at a New Jersey clinic in May 1998 at the urging of William Hickey, the guidance counselor at Hatboro-Horsham High School.

The family also charged that Hickey used the school district's bank accounts to cash checks from the baby's father to finance the abortion, provided excuses so Stephanie could skip school, and drew her a map to the New Jersey clinic, according to the Associated Press.

Pennsylvania's 1989 Abortion Control Act requires teens to notify their parents before an abortion or appear before a judge to bypass the requirement. New Jersey has no parental notification requirement.

The school district settled the case by paying the Carters $20,000 in damages and issuing a directive banning school personnel from encouraging, assisting, aiding, or abetting a student in obtaining an abortion, according to The Record.