Teen Gets Abortion With Help of Her Seattle High School
March 24, 2010 — -- A Seattle mother is irate after she said her 15-year-old daughter's school arranged an abortion for her daughter without her knowledge.
The mother, whose name has been withheld at her request to protect her privacy, told ABC News' Seattle affiliate KOMO-TV that the clinic gave her daughter a pass and helped her get a taxi that took her to a facility where she underwent an abortion.
The mother did not immediately return messages left by ABCNews.com. It was not immediately clear how far along in the pregnancy the teen was at the time of the abortion.
The mother said that she had signed a consent form that permitted her daughter to go to the teen health center on the campus of Ballard High School for what she believed were ailments like earaches, or for routine physicals, but not for an abortion.
"She took a pregnancy test at school at the teen health center," the mother told KOMO. "Nowhere in the paperwork does it mention abortion or facilitating abortion."
The form also allowed her daughter to receive birth control from the school's health clinic, the mother said.
But even so, the mother is furious that her daughter, who is on the school's honor roll, was given an abortion without the school notifying her parents.
"We had no idea this was being facilitated on campus," said the mother. "They just told her that if she concealed it from her family, that it would be free of charge and no financial responsibility."
A spokeswoman for the Seattle School District, which includes Ballard High School, declined to comment and referred all questions to the King County Health Department, the administrator of school-based health programs.
