A pregnant woman was denied accommodations at Georgetown Law, a Catholic university. Students fought back.
A pregnant woman was denied accommodations at Georgetown Law, a Catholic university. Students fought back.
B rittany Lovely is a 34-year-old second-year law student at Georgetown University. She’s also pregnant — due to give birth to her first child on December 2, a birth date that coincides with Georgetown’s final exam period of December 6–13. When Lovely asked law-school administrators if she could take the exam early in the finals period, or from home, her request was initially denied. Only after students started a petition in support of Lovely did administrators reconsider.
Originally, Lovely was told that it would be “inequitable to other non-birthing students in her class,” she told the Washington Post in an interview. A school official “alluded [that] I should have planned better” and told Lovely that “motherhood is not for the faint of heart,” she said in the interview. Georgetown lists on its website a number of adjustments it allows pregnant students, including “excusing absences due to pregnancy or related conditions,” “submitting work after a deadline missed due to pregnancy or childbirth,” and “providing alternatives to make up missed work,” but caveats that such accommodations are allowed on a case-by-case basis. Georgetown is “committed to creating an accessible and inclusive environment for pregnant and parenting students,” it also says on a Pregnancy & Parenting Related Support webpage.
Lovely, who has been advocating for an accommodation for months, didn’t feel as though the school’s emphasis on creating an inclusive environment applied to her. The school allegedly suggested that she should bring her child to campus for her in-person exam on December 13. During a meeting with administrators on October 15, Lovely said that officials denied her requests to take the exam early or from home. They “said that I had to come in person no matter what, to take this exam, and the only times that I could take it were between the 13th and the 18th, with the possibility with emergency circumstance to extend it to the morning of the 20th,” Lovely told CNN. On the call, officials also suggested to Lovely that she should have someone sit outside of the exam room during the test, so that Lovely could take breaks to breastfeed her newborn child.
Students were outraged at the school’s response. They said in the widely circulated petition that accommodations are “not in any way inequitable, nor do they harm my education at Georgetown.” One law professor, Randy Barnett, said on X that “being made aware of the situation, the [Georgetown law] faculty are rallying to her defense.” Another professor, Paul Butler, told Lovely to keep fighting for an accommodation, as he wanted what was best for her and her baby. Because of the thousands of students and alumni who supported her, eventually, the school allowed Lovely to defer the test until January.
“Georgetown is committed to providing a caring, supportive environment for pregnant and parenting students. We have reached a mutually agreeable solution with the student who raised concerns,” a school spokesman said. “Georgetown offers academic and practical resources to assist in the completion of a student’s degree while they are pregnant or parenting including pregnancy related adjustments from the Office of Title IX Compliance, and disability accommodations from our Academic Resource Center. Georgetown does not publicly comment on the specifics of individual student matters.”
As diversity, equity, and inclusion goals have captured higher-education administrators in the past decade or so, universities and graduate programs have dedicated countless resources to providing accommodations and protections for all classes of people. Yet when it came to a pregnant mother, Georgetown balked. Why?
Amid the host of equitable accommodations Georgetown Law allows, it’s unbelievable that Georgetown should describe pregnancy as an “inequitable” condition. Nine gender-inclusive restrooms exist on Georgetown’s campus. The school’s residential team “is committed to partnering with students to identify safe and appropriate housing for individuals who identify as transgender, non-binary, or gender non-conforming,” it says on its website, and offers accommodations based on one’s individual needs. The school is also working on “an initial effort to introduce a gender-inclusive housing protocol for the incoming undergraduate class of 2028”; Georgetown Law links to Georgetown University’s “queer resources” page on its own website, so one assumes that the “future steps to support a residential climate that is inclusive for all students” applies as equally as it does for the undergraduate program as it does for the law program. Students are also given name-change accommodations whenever they’d like them. The school also links to a “free binders” program, organized by the D.C. Center for the LGBTQ Community and the D.C. Area Transmasculine Society. (Chest binders wrap around one’s chest to flatten breasts.) Clearly, inclusive resources abound at Georgetown, for students who find themselves in conditions more abnormal than pregnancy.
Planned or unplanned, pregnancy shouldn’t be met with contempt, as Georgetown administrators so clearly demonstrated in Lovely’s case, and it certainly shouldn’t be evaluated on a scale of “equity.” As a Catholic institution, Georgetown says that it’s committed to “a profound care and responsibility for one another, attentive to each person’s circumstances and concerns and gifts.” It’s unbecoming of any school, much less one that’s Catholic, to look down upon or create obstacles for pregnant women; especially a woman whose only request was to take a test early, so that she could have her baby.