Maddi Runkles (age 18) was an excellent student and president of the student council at Heritage Academy, a small private Christian school she was attending. When Maddi became pregnant, the administrators of the school decided she can’t graduate with the rest of her class. She’ll get her diploma, but not with her classmates.
The anti-abortion group, Students for Life — which took her to a recent rally in Washington — argues that she should be lauded, not punished, for her decision to keep her baby. “Some pro-life people are against the killing of unborn babies, but they won’t speak out in support of the girl who chooses to keep her baby,” Ms. Runkles said. “Honestly, that makes me feel like maybe the abortion would have been better. Then they would have just forgiven me, rather than deal with this visible consequence.”
Rick Kempton, chairman of the board of the Association of Christian Schools International, said about the young woman’s choice: “There’s a biblical term that many Christian schools use, and it is the whole idea of grace: What would Jesus do? She’s making the right choice. But you don’t want to create a celebration that makes other young ladies feel like, ‘Well, that seems like a pretty good option.’”
What Kempton is basically saying is we can see how Christians think – A young girl was having fun and got pregnant and her 10 or even more girlfriends from school will see her big belly and say ‘I want this too.’ Anyway, better safe than sorry.
Jessica Klick, the athletic director at Heritage Academy, had two abortions, one when she was 20 and the second at 21. Ms. Klick, who has two sons with her husband, said she spoke openly of her past to Heritage Academy students. She said she felt pushed into terminating her pregnancies by her own strict religious upbringing. She was terrified of what her parents would think.
In a written statement issued on behalf of the school’s board of directors, David Hobbs, the administrator at Heritage Academy, said Runkles would earn a diploma. However, he called her pregnancy “an internal issue about which much prayer and discussion has taken place.” He also wrote: “Maddi is being disciplined, not because she is pregnant, but because she was immoral. The Student Pledge — which every student from 5th grade through 12th grade signs — notes Philippians 4:8 which provides this application ‘extends to my actions, such as protecting my body by abstaining from sexual immorality and from the use of alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs.’”
Photo Credits: Planned Parenthood
