Scottish Catholic Teacher Takes Legal Action After Firing Over Pro-Life Views

A Catholic history teacher in Scotland is taking her former employer to an employment tribunal after she says she was summarily dismissed for honestly answering students' questions about her opposition to abortion.

Sarah Morse, 66, an American-born teacher at Arbroath High School in Angus, was fired on Nov. 19, 2025, after pupils in a history class asked her about life in the United States, including her views on abortion, during a lesson on the rise of Adolf Hitler.

Morse, a practicing Roman Catholic, answered honestly. "I am a faithful Roman Catholic and I am against it," she told the class. When a student asked about abortion in cases of rape, she explained her belief that the preborn child should not be punished for the crime, while telling students it was reasonable for people to hold the opposite view and that she was not trying to persuade anyone.

By the end of the school day, Morse had been called into a meeting with senior staff and ordered to leave the premises immediately. She said she was never offered a right of reply, never asked for her own account of what happened, and that the head teacher refused to see her at all.

Angus Council said Morse's comments violated guidelines requiring teachers to maintain non-partisan impartiality in the classroom. Morse disputes that her remarks crossed any line, noting she never attempted to persuade students to adopt her views.

"To be 'cancelled' and lose my livelihood because of my religious identity is a terrifying precedent for the teaching profession in Scotland," Morse said. "I will not teach anywhere in this country ever again. It's been an absolute nightmare. I have never felt discriminated against in Canada, in England. It was not a problem. But here I got burnt."

Morse is taking Angus Council to an employment tribunal on Aug. 24, 2026, alleging discrimination. She is being supported in her legal fight by the pro-life group Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC).

SPUC executive director Michael Robinson called the dismissal a "grave matter." "Government guidelines on political impartiality in the classroom do not prohibit the mention of a teacher's legally protected beliefs, provided there is no attempt to persuade," he said.

Robinson added that the school failed to follow any fair process before firing Morse. "There was no attempt to ascertain from Sarah what had happened, and the headteacher was not present and would not even see her," he said. "This latest incident of trying to silence someone with traditional or religious views is utterly disgraceful and should worry us all."

News of Morse's dismissal has drawn wide attention across Britain and abroad, with a public petition in her support gathering more than 17,000 signatures in recent days.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Priests for Life stands with Sarah Morse and every educator who has faced retaliation simply for answering a student's honest question truthfully. Silencing pro-life viewpoints in the classroom does not protect students. It deprives them of an honest, complete conversation about one of the most important moral questions of our time.

Sources: LifeNews.com, Christian Today.

Related: Readers can learn more about legal protections for religious speech in the workplace and classroom through pro-life legal advocacy organizations.