A school in Louisiana has been ordered to reverse a policy whereby students who refuse to take a pregnancy test will be treated as if they are actually pregnant.

Furthermore, the school policy requires that if the pregnancy test comes back positive, then the student would then be banned from class.

Civil liberties campaigners claimed it was discriminatory and unconstitutional, and state officials have issued a statement requiring the school to reverse its policy within a week or face sanctions from the department of education.

From the Delhi Charter School’s policy manual: “The school reserves the right to require a female student to take a pregnancy test to confirm whether or not the suspected student is in fact pregnant”

Marjorie Esman, of the ACLU, issued a letter stating that "what a school should do is treat pregnancy as any other medical condition and allow the student to participate fully in anything that she's medically capable of participating in.”

The school policy is the latest in a string of attacks on women’s reproductive rights in the US, with a Virginia law stating that a woman who wished to receive an abortion in the state would have to undergo an involuntary ‘vaginal ultrasound’ which constitutes rape under the law, and the Republican attack on Planned Parenthood which wishes to defund the organisation despite abortion consisting of less than 3% of the annual budget.