Teen Pregnancy pact

[LadyTevar]

Yes. She was an 'early bloomer' as they say, had a woman's body at 11yrs old, got a daughter by the time she's 13.

What the fuck... That's really just plain absurd. Sex Ed should be taught at an earlier age then shouldn't it?

This was the early 1980s. I didn't get a Sex Ed class until 9th Grade (1985).

[Adrian Laguna]

Am I supposed to feal bad because our Valevictorian in my Graduating class had two kids already thanks to abuse?

I'm impressed that with abuse and two kids she managed to make Valedictorian.

[Kitsune]

My sister had her first child when she was something like 16 in the 1960s (I believe 1966) and the father is my father (She has a different natural father than I do) and that was two years before I was born

[phred]

Am I supposed to feal bad because our Valevictorian in my Graduating class had two kids already thanks to abuse?

I'm impressed that with abuse and two kids she managed to make Valedictorian.

In that case the abuse was probably the driving force behind it.(Im getting the hell out of here as fast as possible.)

They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally

Am I a bad person for laughing uncontrollably when I read this? Also, are they all only or youngest children with no memories of younger siblings to remind them what having an infant in the house is really like?

[Kitsune]

Conservatives (and I don't think I agree with them in this case) seem have a different take on the situation:

http://www.thenaturaltruth.blogspot.com/

[Kanastrous]

I read through that a couple times and don't really understand his take.

[Kitsune]

That birth control should not be given out to students and that abstinence only training should be given.

[Wanderer]

The youngest mother was a Peruvian girl in the ...1940's? I believe... she had a birth defect-- her ovaries, uterus, all her baby-making parts were those of a mature adult woman, even though her physical body was that of an ordinary 6 year old girl. From the outside, there was no way to tell, and so whoever molested her probably thought that she was so young no way she'd get pregnant... and whoever it was get caught. But as (bad) luck would have it...

How ironic-- the banner at the bottom asked "are you the world's best mom?"

May 14, 1939 (Mother's Day of that year).

[Schuyler Colfax]

The youngest mother was a Peruvian girl in the ...1940's? I believe... she had a birth defect-- her ovaries, uterus, all her baby-making parts were those of a mature adult woman, even though her physical body was that of an ordinary 6 year old girl. From the outside, there was no way to tell, and so whoever molested her probably thought that she was so young no way she'd get pregnant... and whoever it was get caught. But as (bad) luck would have it...

How ironic-- the banner at the bottom asked "are you the world's best mom?"

May 14, 1939 (Mother's Day of that year).

That's just disturbing.
Kudos to the both of them for surviving that.

[Mayabird]

I don't know if "kudos" is the right word. A doctor saved their lives with an C-section and the girl's parents raised the child as the girl's younger brother. It's not like she was in any state to take care of the boy herself.

[Darth Ruinus]

How big is your school.

Thats true, I probably go to a small school by most people's standards, seeing as how it is only 1 building with 5 floors. 3,000 or 4,000 students, I forgot what it was.

[Kitsune]

Maybe 400 to 500 total in my school with 96 as the graduating class.
I don't know of any pregnancies while I was in school but it is possible that I had not been enough connected to the rumor mill.

[Darth Wong]

I can't help but think that all of the "family" = "moral goodness" propaganda in popular culture today has something to do with this phenomenon. These are girls who feel like they're worthless, but that having kids will make them worthwhile: it will make them valuable to a society that didn't care about them before. Now who oh who could have put that idea into their heads? Of course, one could point out that the proper "family values" theme also requires marriage, but these are people who have grown up in single-parent families.

[Kanastrous]

I'm not sure it really goes much beyond the infantile I want something to love me unconditionally business. By and large this society does not exalt single mothers, it condemns them while allocating them enough support to scrape by.

[Mayabird]

Those babies that are supposedly full of unconditional love are going to be abused, physically and emotionally, as soon as the love switches to demands for feeding at 3 AM. Just like a lot of those girls were, no doubt.

[FSTargetDrone]

Meh. Seems the whole "let's all get pregnant together for ill-conceived (HA!) reasons" angle may be a hoax:

Mass. school official casts doubt on 'pregnancy pact'

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY

A supposed "pregnancy pact" that drew worldwide attention to eight teenage girls at a Massachusetts high school may be fiction, the city's school board chairman says. He says none of the girls has confirmed any pact on the record.

"My gut feeling is that there may have been some sort of pact after the fact — you know, two girls who are pregnant say they'll stick together," Greg Verga, chairman of the Gloucester, Mass., school committee, said Sunday.

Reporters took notice of the fishing community northeast of Boston last week after reports that 18 girls at Gloucester High School — more than four times last year's total — learned they were pregnant this spring, and school principal Joseph Sullivan told Time magazine that eight of those girls had agreed "to get pregnant and raise their babies together."

Sullivan could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Verga said the story of the pact uncoiled like a game of telephone in the month or so since a local newspaper reported on the spike in pregnancies and the resignation of the pediatrician, Brian Orr, and the nurse, Kim Daly, who ran the school's health clinic.

They quit last month after a dispute with the hospital that funds the clinic. The pair had proposed offering contraceptives to students confidentially, a plan that Cindy Donaldson, the hospital's executive director, opposed, the Gloucester Daily Times reported.

Neither Orr nor Donaldson could be reached for comment Sunday.

Ray Lamont, editor of the Gloucester Daily Times, says his reporters, who have covered the pregnancy spike since March, did not find any pact.

Time reporter Kathleen Kingsbury, who originally wrote that the girls believed to be in the pact "declined to be interviewed," later told National Public Radio she had spoken to many of the girls and their friends, but all were unwilling to be identified.

She told NPR the girls "really didn't have a strong life plan and decided, essentially, to make their own plan and take control of the situation. They decided … to be a mother would be their identity."

Experts say the Gloucester pregnancies and an increase in the rate of teen pregnancies nationwide show that many teens still don't understand, or don't want to understand, the burdens of pregnancy.

"This is not a story about sex education," says Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "This is a story about a failure to take childbirth seriously. These girls could have had condoms distributed in their living rooms, and they still would have gotten pregnant."

Nancy Redd, author of the 2007 self-help book Body Drama, blames the entertainment media's "obsession" with pregnant celebrities coupled with incomplete information from adults about the realities of pregnancy. "Teenagers are really smart. They're not getting pregnant because they're dumb, they're getting pregnant because they're misinformed. Everything they have just tells them that pregnancy is fascinating."

Says Lamont: " 'Pact' or not, these kids thought it would be cool to be moms together. Where did they get that idea?"

Contributing: Angela Haupt

[Darth Wong]

Meh. Seems the whole "let's all get pregnant together for ill-conceived (HA!) reasons" angle may be a hoax:

Unfortunately, the fact of high teen pregnancy among underprivileged girls is not. These girls either think that the babies will fulfill some dream of unconditional love or automatically bring them respect from society (or both).

[Isolder74]

Says Lamont: " 'Pact' or not, these kids thought it would be cool to be moms together. Where did they get that idea?"

That question says it all. I hazard a guess it could be that due to the media's recient infactuation with celebrity pregnancies that teens are starting to see having a baby as stylish. Logical or not they want to be noticed and the media right now seems to be saying, get a big pregnant belly and everyone will pay attention to you.

[Coyote]

It seems that overall, these young girls are given to believe that their identities, self-worth, and value (as well as the source of love) all is based on their bodies and reproductive abilities. It seems kind of head-smacking to say that, after years of hearing things like that, but stuff like this really hits it home.

[Big Phil]

Anyone see the latest politically correct, ass-covering spin on this story?


http://my.earthlink.net/channel/news/pr ... 1321935355

Mass. mayor says no proof girls had pregnancy pact
June 23, 2008 2:16 PM EDT

GLOUCESTER, Mass. - The city's mayor said Monday there is no evidence a group of young girls made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together, seeking to dispel an explosive theory put forth by the high school principal.

"Any planned blood-oath bond to become pregnant - there is absolutely no evidence of," Mayor Carolyn Kirk said Monday after a closed-door meeting with city, school and health leaders.

Conspicuously absent from that meeting was Gloucester High School Principal Joseph Sullivan, who has not responded to repeated requests for comment after he was quoted last week in a Time magazine story saying the girls planned to get pregnant together.

The mayor, who also sits on the school committee, said she was not comfortable having Sullivan at the meeting.

Kirk cited privacy concerns in refusing to answer many questions about the 17 girls who became pregnant this school year - more than quadruple the number who generally become pregnant as the school.

Kirk said she and Superintendent Christopher Farmer have been in touch with Sullivan, and that he was "foggy in his memory" about how he came to believe there was a pact.

"When pressed, his memory failed," Kirk said.

Authorities have talked to school and health officials who work most closely with the children and, Kirk said, "The people that worked with the children on a daily basis have said there has been no mention whatsoever of a pact."

Kirk said the spike in pregnancies is in keeping with similar spikes in other cities.

Farmer said there was a "distinct possibility" that the girls who found themselves in similar, challenging situations later decided to "come together for mutual support."

He said the Time magazine piece did not distinguish between "a pact to become pregnant or a pact because we are pregnant."

Farmer also said it was clear some of the girls were not trying very hard not to become pregnant. The principal had said some girls gave high-fives and planned baby showers while others were sullen if their pregnancy tests at the high school clinic came back negative.

Farmer defended Sullivan saying, "I don't believe anyone has acted in particularly bad faith here."

Gloucester resident Annette Dion, a 45-year-old private music teacher, said school and city officials should have done more to find out whether the girls truly made a pact to become pregnant. She said denying such a pact existed is "pretty naive."

"I don't think we heard the truth today," Dion said, adding that pop culture has glamorized teen pregnancy and that movies and celebrity pregnancies do not give girls an accurate picture of parenthood.

"My personal feeling, my impression, is they probably talked and discussed and thought it would be cool to get pregnant together," she said.

[Broomstick]

It seems that overall, these young girls are given to believe that their identities, self-worth, and value (as well as the source of love) all is based on their bodies and reproductive abilities. It seems kind of head-smacking to say that, after years of hearing things like that, but stuff like this really hits it home.

For most of history, women actually were valued primarily for their bodies and reproductive abilities. For many chronically poor women raising children may be the only thing of note (good or bad) they ever accomplish in their lives. If you don't have any money to put into a retirement account children may still be your only option for your old age.

"Start fucking and have lots of kids" is actually a basic, biological drive in human beings. We can certainly rise above it, do things in addition to it, and use our intelligence and ambition to either delay that or, if we don't have children, to find other compensating things in life, but people left in ignorant poverty seldom have the tools to bootstrap themselves out of that mindset.

[ArmorPierce]

Am I supposed to feal bad because our Valevictorian in my Graduating class had two kids already thanks to abuse?

I'm impressed that with abuse and two kids she managed to make Valedictorian.

You'd be surprised. Some valedictorians try compensating for other areas in life by engrossing themselves in their school work.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Am I supposed to feal bad because our Valevictorian in my Graduating class had two kids already thanks to abuse?

I'm impressed that with abuse and two kids she managed to make Valedictorian.

In that case the abuse was probably the driving force behind it.(Im getting the hell out of here as fast as possible.)

They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally

Am I a bad person for laughing uncontrollably when I read this? Also, are they all only or youngest children with no memories of younger siblings to remind them what having an infant in the house is really like?

That would be quite correct. Nothing like having a very nasty Uncle, who was also a local pro-life, and church big wig. I swear if we had had our act together, and if that song had come out maybe a little earlier, we would have found a way to play Aerosmith's "Jenny's got a Gun" for the end of the school year.

[Big Phil]

Aerosmith's "Jenny's got a Gun"

Janie, dude... Janie's Got a Gun





Oh, and before you fuck it up as well, it's Big Old jet airliner, NOT Bingo jet had a light on

[Surlethe]

I was talking earlier with my fiancee about this. I don't know where she saw this, but apparently the closest place where they could have bought birth control without parental consent -- if they'd wanted to -- was thirty miles away.

Remember, folks: abstinence is the only 100% guarantee!