A Time article dated 6/18 stated that the pregnancy rate at Gloucester High is FOUR TIMES higher than last year. Personally, it's appalling that there is a pregnancy rate at ALL in any high school. I refuse to believe that this is a "coincidence."
The Gloucester High principal, Joseph Sullivan, said that many girls were questioned around October - and it didn't take long, Sullivan claims, for almost half of the girls who were already pregnant - all who were 16 years of age or YOUNGER - to admit that they had made a "pregnancy pact" and had vowed to raise their children together.
Sullivan also admitted that one of the babies was fathered by "a 24-year-old homeless guy."
...what?
As if all of this was not disturbing enough, residents in Gloucester are HESITANT about providing better access to birth control.
...WHAT?
Gloucester is a town that has deep-rooted Catholic values. I understand this, as I was raised Catholic and attended a private, Catholic high school. I appreciate the traditional Catholic values. I think it is important to share these values with your children. But clearly, there is a problem here, right? Something isn't getting through to these girls.
I have a big issue with the refusal to provide birth control to Gloucester teens. I just find it appalling that 17 pregnancies is not enough to spur the adults in this town to action. Principal Sullivan told Time that he does not believe that access to birth control would have prevented the 17 pregnancies, because the school nurse informed him that several girls had planned to become pregnant for quite some time, and that their pregnancies were deliberate. Perhaps there is some truth to Sullivan's claim, but then you have to look much deeper: what drove these girls to think that conceiving a child would be a good idea?
Apparently it is legal in MA to distribute birth control to minors without the consent of their parents, as did a school nurse in Gloucester. AND - over 150 pregnancy tests were administered to Gloucester High students.
There's also a "rumor" that officials may seek out the homeless man who had sex with one of the Gloucester teens and attempt to charge him with statutory rape. This, to me, is comical. I'd like to know how officials will locate this guy. If they DO find him, I wonder if he will actually be charged. Can you imagine this young girl demanding that the homeless father of her child pay child support for the next eighteen years? What will she tell her child when s/he asks about their dad? "Well, the story of your conception is really quite romantic..." - come on. If that isn't a deliberate attempt to get pregnant, I don't know what is. I mean...you've got to REALLY be LOOKING to have sex/get pregnant if you go to the trouble of seeking out a random man that also happens to be homeless.
I also find this tidbit to be quite alarming: the AP reporter who wrote a story for MSNBC.com wrote this:
17 [pregnancies] last year, compared with the typical four.
The "TYPICAL four?" Does this strike anyone else as a strange method of phrasing this statistic? In my mind, four pregnant girls should never be considered "typical," or "the norm."
Some claim that these girls may have been influenced by the popular film Juno, or by the pregnancy of Jamie Lynn Spears, younger celebuwreck of Britney Jean Spears. I have to say that I find it difficult to believe that teenage girls saw Juno and thought "It'd be really cool to get pregnant and give a baby up for adoption." I also find it difficult to believe that teenage girls emulated Jamie Lynn Spears and thought, "You know, if Jamie Lynn is pregnant, then I think I'll consider having a baby at sixteen, too." Teenagers may be naive, but I do not think that they are necessarily stupid. I believe that teenagers who saw Juno enjoyed it for the entertainment value [because it was a very humorous movie, despite what I thought were some slow, disappointing parts]. I don't think they watched it and then decided that becoming a pregnant teenager would be socially acceptable. I also think that teenagers [especially girls] probably judged Jamie Lynn Spears and now consider her to be a poor role model and an irresponsible young woman.
I think the cause of these 17 pregnancies go much deeper than a movie or a pregnant teenage TV star. I think these girls wanted camaraderie, a sense of loyalty and someone to love them. I think that they may have come from unstable homes. I think that they were probably looking for attention. I may be way off base, and I don't have a degree in psychology, but I'm pretty sure that I'm correct in my assumptions.
I also think that the staff at Gloucester High dropped the ball when it came to these girls - when you consider that staff/school nurses/the PRINCIPAL heard chatter and rumors that "a group of girls were planning to get pregnant" for several months before the girls found out they were pregnant, you understand that there was an opportunity here for the staff to intervene...a small window of time where they could have addressed the rumors, and perhaps even gotten to the root of the issue [see above] before the girls did something desperate.
It's clearly a very new world that we are living in. If four pregnancies is a "typical" occurrence in high school, I refuse to accept this.
What will it be next?
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