A young woman who chose not to have an abortion and was then fired from her job has filed a lawsuit against her former employer.
Christina Garcia became pregnant at the age of 16 while working for a
doctor’s office in Texas. She was employed by Dr. Meenakshi Prabhaker
at ID (Infectious Diseases) Doctors. According to Garcia, Dr. Prabhaker
told her to get an abortion. She says, “He [Dr. Prabhaker] said it
wasn’t a good image for him. I was very upset. I started crying.”
According to the lawsuit, Dr. Prabhakar tried to bribe the young
woman into getting an abortion. He offered to pay her college tuition
and to pay for a psychologist if she felt she needed one. As Garcia
says, “The only thing is that I would have to get the abortion and I
would have to maintain birth control.”
But Garcia did not want to abort her baby.
She made it clear to him that she intended to give birth. When she
returned home, her father told her that the doctor had called and spoken
to Garcia’s mother. According to Garcia’s parents, she had been fired
because she refused to have an abortion.
Garcia’s mother had also been working for Dr. Prabhakar, but when her daughter was fired, she tendered her resignation.
Christina Garcia gave birth to a baby girl who is now nine months old. She has no regrets.
“She’s learning new things everyday,” she says of her daughter.
Teenagers who are pregnant are extremely vulnerable to abortion
coercion by adults around them, and women at any age can be pressured by
their employers. It is illegal to discriminate against a pregnant woman
or to fire her for her refusal to have an abortion.
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