Delhi Charter School in rural northeast Louisiana had a controversial policy in place from 2006 to 2012 that required students who were suspected of being pregnant to take a pregnancy test. If students refused or tested positive, they were kicked out and required to be home-schooled. Since a member of the Delhi Charter community filed a complaint with the ACLU, the school has been thrown in the center of the national debate on how academic institutions should handle teen pregnancy.
The school's policy was changed after the complaint was filed, according to the school's board chairman on Wednesday.
Earlier today, a HuffPost Live segment investigated the ways in which American schools are failing to support teen parents. Host Alicia Menendez talked to Huffington Post Teen Editor Elizabeth Perle, along with two teen mothers and a teen father. Check out the video above to watch the full segment.
One of the teen moms, Natasha, became pregnant at 17. "I trusted the school nurse, told her, and within a week, all the teachers in the school knew about my status," she told HuffPost Live. "I was only a few weeks along, but they were already making much of my life in high school really miserable and politely persuading me to either leave the school or get an abortion."
Perle blamed schools for the lack of support teen parents receive. "We're tar and feathering [teen parents], we're scarlet-lettering them, and we're kicking them out of schools because we don't want to deal with the messy reality that teen moms want to raise their children, they want to stay in school, and they want to be teens."
Perle argued that is the school's responsibility to help every student who wants to graduate make sure that they have that opportunity -- whether or not they are pregnant.
"No one should be punished for teen pregnancy," Perle emphasized, "because it's not an offense."
What's your stance on how schools should handle teen pregnancy? Sound off in the comments, and tweet @HuffPostTeen.