Pregnancy pact in Gloucester (Mass.)

Pregnancy booming and town officials say that the school doctors and nurse practioners have no right to "decide what's right for the kids" because they suggested they should be allowed to prescribe or provide contraceptives.


http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1815845,00.html?cnn=yes

 

A lot of disturbing things:

*Girls feeling the need to have someone to love/to love them unconditionally. Says a lot for our supposedly empowered culture, eh?

*The idea that "contraceptives solve everything." Again - the girls <i>wanted</i> to get pregnant. Wouldn't the <i>desire</i> be the issue here? Should schools tell girls not seek out 24-year-old homeless men? <i>If you're going to have sex with a 24-year-old homeless man, please do it while on the pill</i>. Contraceptives do not come with a good decision-making hormones. Anyhow. Kids know what they are. Kids are big time consumers. They watch MTV. Contraception is everywhere. This isn't AP Biology or something. Good God, kids use drugs at an alarming rate, commit suicide at an alarming rate, videotape their own backyard fights at an alarming rate...do we actually think ignorance is the root problem with teen sex? Or is that they just want to have sex because they're sold that it's fun, and they don't much care whether it's protected or not?

*What entity's front and center here? The overworked public school. As I've made clear in other places: I, and many Americans, really do not care what the principal's position is on this. Or the school nurse. When people cede their children's sexual/reproductive education to schools, they're asking for a world of trouble, because nobody can quite decide how to proceed, as evidenced here.

*In this story and on TV this morning, a real sense of "the girls' lives are over" wafting at me. Again, let's be frank: We should care a lot about a 16-year-old's well-being after they've had a baby. But we should care just as much, if not more, about the helpless baby. If Americans, and particularly the media, spent more time talking about how to take care of these kids, rather than whether a girl's childhood was lost because she chose to have sex, we wouldn't have another generation of kids doing making these kinds of decisions.

 

My question is, why is this the school district's problem to solve?

Where are the fucking parents?

 

Something about this story stinks.

17 girls make a "pact" to get pregnant?
So at least 17 girls made a pact and they ALL got pregnant?
I'll buy that 17 girls got pregnant at this school.. but due to a pact? Huh-uh. I don't believe it.
The stories do not confirm or corroborate a pact. There is no interview with any of the kids, which isn't surprising, or the parents, which is surprising.
The principal, while quoted, is repeating information (about the 24-year-old homeless guy being a father) that he did not get first-hand.
"We found out ..." How did "we" find out? Where are the parents? Any of them?

This story is a little too far-fetched to be believed in its entirety.

Give that man a Ci-Gar!

 

To be fair, the story did indicate that the girls in the alleged pact refused to be interviewed, as did their parents. But you're right. We don't have much solid evidence that there really was a pact.

That being said, does it ultimately make a difference?

 

I think they should have included the names of all these girls' parents in the story.

 

As far as this being interesting? No.
Reporting? Yes.

Edit: One of my golf buddies is a middle school teacher. He tells parents at parent-teacher conferences if they only believe half of what their kids tell them about him, he'll only believe half of what they tell him about them.
Kids - especially those under the age of 16 - tend to stretch and exaggerate things. I don't think this is any expection.
I'll bet the "pact" was made between about three, maybe five, girls.
But it is still alarming.
And as a father makes me so, so glad I have all boys!

 

Uh - why? It's not illegal to get pregnant or have a child. I'm alarmed by the story, but a witch hunt? No.

Would you like to post the names of parents whose daughters get abortions, too?

 

These parents are idiots.

 

No doubt about that.

But again, why release the names of the kids?

 

So let's not even try? That's a real defeatist attitude. Let's say having contraceptives available only stops one or two girls from getting pregnant. That's not good enough?

How someone can look at 17(!) girls getting pregnant and not think that maybe, just maybe introducing them to the idea of contraception might help is completely nonsensical.