A spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati said Thursday it’s “very unfortunate” a pregnant, unwed first-grade teacher at Kettering’s Ascension School lost her job and medical benefits when church officials fired her. But Dan Andriacco said the archdiocese did the right thing because Kathleen Quinlan’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy would set “a horrible example to the children.”

Quinlan’s attorney, Micah Siegal of Dayton, said, “I think it sets a bad example to first- and second-graders to send a mother pregnant with twins out in the cold without health insurance. I can’t imagine that’s in keeping with the sanctity of life that the Catholic church holds out as its watchword.”

Quinlan of Kettering is suing the archdiocese and Ascension church and school in federal court, alleging her firing at the end of 2011 violates federal pregnancy discrimination law. She said the policy that got her fired discriminates against women because the archdiocese does nothing to assure that male employees aren’t violating Catholic teachings by having premarital sex.

She was fired by the archdiocese, which runs area Catholic schools, after she told Ascension Principal Brent Devitt she was pregnant with twin girls, according to her Dec. 14 lawsuit in U.S. District Court. The archdiocese in a termination letter told her she was fired for breaching a clause in her employment contract that requires her to “comply with and act consistently in accordance with” Catholic teachings.

Andriacco said archdiocesan officials recognize they employ and teach non-Catholics in their schools, but “that said, we are a Catholic institution, (and) we expect our teachers not to be in open violation of Catholic teachings. If we are aware of anyone violating Catholic teachings, we will enforce the contract, male or female.”

Siegal said federal law prohibits pregnancy discrimination and, as a teacher, Quinlan isn’t subject to a “ministerial exception” to the law.

Both Andriacco and Siegal say legal precedent supports their positions.

Another former teacher, Christa Dias of Clermont County, also is suing the Cincinnati archdiocese in a similar federal case. She was fired in 2010 after officials learned the unmarried teacher was pregnant due to artificial insemination.

In another pending federal case, married Indiana schoolteacher Emily Herx is suing the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend for firing her in 2011 for using in vitro fertilization treatments.