ANOTHER teacher in UK suing for discrimination after being fired for pro-life views

Anita Meston was a history teacher for 28 years and had been employed by Biddick Academy in Sunderland, North East England since 2024. 

That was until she responded to a question from one of her students in relation to abortion.  

ADF International, who are representing Meston, have said that during this conversation with the class, a student asked Meston if she was pro-abortion. Meston replied stating that she was pro-life, referencing her faith as a Christian.

Meston also referenced the fact that she knew women who had regretted their abortions. The pupil who asked her the initial question responded that she knew women who did not regret their abortions. Meston responded “Fair enough”, before bringing the conversation back to the history lesson. 

The following day, Meston was asked to meet with the headmaster of Biddick Academy. She was informed during the meeting that a complaint had been lodged against her for “sharing personal opinions on political issues with pupils”, and as a result, her contract was being terminated.

The headmaster further claimed that there was a “real concern” that she would continue to “cause harm or distress to pupils”. 

On the matter, Meston has said:

I am profoundly shocked by Biddick Academy’s decision to dismiss me for my faith-based pro-life beliefs and other mainstream personal and political views. I do not believe it is a teacher’s role to impose beliefs unrelated to the lesson in the classroom. I merely acknowledged my students’ questions and provided truthful answers before redirecting them back to the lesson at hand.

If our national education system continues to claim to foster inclusion and tolerance, this must include tolerance of perspectives with which others disagree. With the support of Alliance Defending Freedom, I am now taking legal action against Biddick Academy to ensure nobody else faces discrimination for expressing pro-life beliefs.

In a free and just society, teachers should not be fired for honestly expressing their deeply-held beliefs in response to questions in the classroom. What happened to me is nothing short of censorship, and this precedent cannot be allowed to stand.”

ADF also noted that during her time at Biddick Academy, a group of students repeatedly asked Meston for her views on Nigel Farage and Donald Trump during her lessons, to which she responded briefly that they were both popular politicians before returning to the subject of the lesson.

“One pupil also asked Meston if she would be attending a Reform UK party conference in February 2025, after Meston had encountered a student at a Reform UK event on a previous occasion. Meston said she would be attending.”

“Meston did not force her views on students at any point.”

In March 2025, Meston had been asked to cover a history lesson discussing the proportionality of the 1945 bombing of Dresden. In an attempt to engage the class, Meston asked whether similar moral issues surrounded the current Israel-Palestine conflict, at which point one student affirmed that he was “pro-Israel” and asked whether Meston was too. She responded that she was, but lamented that innocent people in Gaza were caught in the conflict. 

Not the first time

Meston, in fact, is the second teacher in the UK who has allegedly been fired this year for sharing pro-life views in response to a pupil’s direct question on the issue. 

A statement was released in September of this year by Sarah Morse, a substitute teacher at Arbroath High School in Scotland who was fired after responding to a student’s question regarding her stance on abortion.

She told her students that she was a “faithful Roman Catholic”, and as a result, was pro-life and against abortion, even in the case of pregnancy resulting from rape. She told her students that the preborn child should “not be punished”, however she understood that this opinion would be met with disagreement from others. 

Morse was fired the same day. 

She proceeded to sue the Angus Council for discrimination, and reached a settlement instead. 

Morse states that at no point during her teaching did she ever attempt to “persuade any student” to share her views on abortion. She was simply answering what had been asked of her. Moreover, Morse stated that she “taught them that it is possible to have hard conversations with respect and that disagreement is a natural part of a free society," and “to be ‘cancelled’ and lose my livelihood because of my religious identity is a terrifying precedent for the teaching profession in Scotland. I will not teach anywhere in this country ever again. It’s been an absolute nightmare.”

COMMENT: Pro-life views increasingly under attack

Being pro-life and unashamedly anti-abortion is a stance that is under constant attack. 

Last week, also in the UK, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, charity volunteer and director of March for Life UK pleaded “not guilty” to new charges for silently praying outside an abortion clinic during a preliminary hearing at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court. Her legal team argue that Ms Vaughan-Spruce is being discriminated against, since the prosecution’s case centres around the fact that her presence in the “buffer zone” only became an issue as a result of her openly pro-life stance — therefore tacitly acknowledging that if it weren’t for her anti-abortion views, Ms Vaughan-Spruce’s presence within the “buffer zone” would not have been considered an offence.

In the north of Ireland since 2023, praying outside abortion centres has been a crime, with Belfast City Council approving draft bye laws that directly threaten freedom of speech and peaceful Christian witness. These bye-laws introduce fines for public preaching, praying and even speaking. Belfast Council also voted to ban the display of images used by pro-life groups including pictures on banners, posters, and even clothing, with fines of up to £1,500. Pro-life leaflets would be forced into sealed envelopes with “WARNING” labels. 

Pro-lifers must continue to fight against this authoritarianism and resist the urge to allow cases and stories like these to blend into the background as they inevitably become more and more commonplace. Life will win.