A former student is suing Springfield College for $500,000, alleging the school violated her civil rights and discriminated against her religious beliefs after she was required to observe an abortion procedure.
Alina Thopurathu, an Indian-American Catholic who was studying to be a physician assistant, claims the institution also breached its contract with her when she was kicked out of the program, according to a copy of the lawsuit, obtained by The College Fix.
After expressing concerns about the abortion, she alleges the private Massachusetts college began “sabotaging her stellar academic record,” which ultimately led to her being dismissed.
Her situation was met with support from a national pro-life organization, Students for Life of America.
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“The Hippocratic Oath ensures that doctors or those studying to be physicians are guided by the principle- ‘First, do no harm.’ Putting a baby to death violates that oath and violates Life,” spokesperson Michael Allers told The College Fix in a recent email.
“Students for Life stands with all Catholics in the academic space that are discriminated against by the secular elite,” Allers said.
The complaint turns on a required clinical rotation during which she observed a second-trimester abortion procedure known as dilation and evacuation, or D&E, a procedure she says violated her deeply held religious beliefs.
The procedure occurred while Thopurathu was training under the supervision of an OB-GYN at a Massachusetts hospital in the Baystate Health system. Massachusetts law allows abortion without restriction through the second trimester.
In a D&E, “the woman’s cervix is dilated, and the unborn baby and other pregnancy tissue are removed in a piecemeal fashion with suction and instruments,” according to a fact sheet by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, a pro-life research organization.
The second-trimester abortion method is sometimes referred to by pro-life advocates as a “dismemberment abortion” because “large, crushing forceps” are used “to grip portions of the unborn child and dismember them,” according to the fact sheet.
While observing the procedure, Thopurathu said she experienced significant emotional distress.
According to the lawsuit, after observing the abortion, Thopurathu wrote about it in her clinical rotation evaluation. She said she should have been informed ahead of time and been given a choice whether to watch.
“I was very overwhelmed by this experience. However, I was too afraid to speak up because I didn’t want to cause a (scene). In the future, I believe students should be asked if they are comfortable seeing a D&E rather than being assigned the procedure without patient information,” she wrote.
The supervising physician, Dr. Kristin Dardano, acknowledged her discomfort in the evaluation but still provided a positive overall assessment of the student’s performance. She received an 84.5 percent score for the rotation, the complaint states.
However, in December 2022, Thopurathu met with Springfield College President Mary-Beth Cooper to discuss her evaluation comments.
During the meeting, Thopurathu says she was pressured into signing several documents, one of which changed her rotation grade from a passing score to “incomplete,” according to the complaint.
Her complaint claims that this action was “part of an effort to achieve a predetermined result” and effectively set her up for dismissal from the program.
Shortly after the meeting, in February 2023, she took a short-term leave of absence due to increased anxiety.
According to court documents, while most leaves at the college reportedly extend for a full academic year, Thopurathu was only granted one month. She alleges this discrepancy was unfair and contributed to her inability to recover sufficiently before being required to resume clinical work.
Due to the newly assigned incomplete grade, the college mandated that she complete an additional clinical rotation in order to graduate—bringing her total to 12 instead of the usual 11, the complaint alleges.
While Thopurathu had previously maintained a strong academic record, with a GPA of 3.4 and an average rotation grade of 91 percent, she received a significantly lower score of 77 percent in the final rotation, according to the lawsuit.
In July 2023, “on the grounds that she failed two Clinical Rotations,” the college dismissed Thopurathu from the physician assistant program. This included the rotation where she observed the abortion; however, according to her complaint, her transcript shows she had an 84.5 percent, which “qualifies as passing.”
As reported by MassLive, the dismissal occurred two months after her intended graduation date.
She appealed the decision, but a committee that reviewed her case upheld the administration’s decision in 2024, according to the complaint.
In the lawsuit, Thopurathu argues that her dismissal was unjustified and motivated by bias against her religious objections to abortion. The complaint accuses the college of religious and national origin discrimination, contractual breach, and civil conspiracy.
The complaint names the college and its president, along with the co-directors of the PA program, as defendants.
Thopurathu is asking for $500,000 due to lost tuition and other alleged damages.
Neither the defendants, Thopurathu, nor their attorneys responded to The College Fix’s requests for comment.
LifeNews Note: College Fix contributor Ethan Savka is a student at the Community College of Allegheny County, where he studies political science. He is a local leader for Convention of States, a nationwide grassroots movement to amend the Constitution. Ethan is an active member of both The Federalist Society and The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. This column originally appeared at The College Fix.
