Posted on 06/20/2008 6:43:59 PM PDT by traumer
Officials in the US state of Massachusetts are investigating how 17 teenage girls from the same school have become pregnant.
The number is four times as high as the year before at Gloucester High School.
There are reports that some of the girls - none of whom is older than 16 - entered into a pact to have their babies together.
The girls and their families have so far made no comment. Officials are also investigating the ages of the fathers.
Some are believed to be in their twenties and could face the possibility of being charged with having sex with minors.
It is illegal to have sex with anyone younger than 16 in Massachusetts.
Disturbing
Some of the school's own staff believe the sharp increase in the number of pregnancies was no accident.
Don't try to get pregnant - people say they know what it's like but they really have no idea Amanda Ireland Gloucester teenage mother
"Some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Gloucester High School principal Joseph Sullivan told Time magazine.
Local officials say that nearly half of the girls had entered into a bizarre pact to have their babies together.
Dr Elizabeth Guthrie, a paediatric psychiatrist at New York's Columbia University, told the BBC that some girls might be viewing pregnancy as a fast-track to adulthood and independence.
"It may give you an opportunity for unconditional love and attention from the baby," she said.
Local teenager Amanda Ireland, a mother who has just graduated from Gloucester High School, offered a blunt warning to other girls.
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"Don't try to get pregnant. People say they know what it's like because they have younger siblings, but they really have no idea," she told the BBC.
David Landry, a researcher at the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based non-profit group focusing on reproductive issues, said the declining teenage pregnancy rate of recent years appeared to be reversing.
Birth rates for girls aged 15 to 17 rose by 3% in 2006, the first increase since 1991, according to preliminary data released in December by the National Center for Health Statistics.
This trend was highlighted on Thursday when Britney Spears' 17-year-old sister Jamie Lynn, star of a popular television show Zoey 101, gave birth to a baby girl, according to People magazine.
But Mr Landry cautioned against attributing the pact or the worrying statistics to Hollywood. Recent hits have included Juno, in which a teenager gets pregnant and decides to have the baby, and Knocked Up, a comedy about a one-night stand.
"The trend emerged before those movies," he said.
Thank you Hollywood....
“are investigating how 17 teenage girls from the same school have become pregnant”
I’m thinking “Science Project”
We’ve had pregnant teens dotting the landscape for years. My mother was one of them way back in 64.
Being a teenager is a mental illness.
Jamie Lynn announced she was pregnant in January. When was the Gloucester "pact" created?
This is the pinnacle of feminist achievement!
“Every child should be a planned and wanted child.”
- Joycelyn Elders
“Being a teenager is a mental illness.”
LOL! I thought that many times while raising my own two. I’ve also thought...”Oy, are they really mine????” or “Eegads! What planet did you come from?” :0)
Is statutory rape (i.e. sexual intercourse involving an adult male and a chronologically pre-adult female) a crime in Taxachussetts?
Glenn Beck's show last night, had the woman who runs the day care, provided by the school and our tax dollars, and she was asked if the school even believes in any kind of shame. She said no, we do not believe in shame. VERY telling.
Then the guys from planned parenthood in MA, said the school was prohibited from giving the kids birth control without their parents permission, and that was why these girls got pregnant. Now someone tell me how birth control, which these girls would not have used because they WANTED to get pregnant, would have helped???
The problem is squarely on society and even more so the public school system that enables this behavior in kids, even encourages it. Sexualizing children is criminal, but it is done every day by govt entities and the media, and it's all ok.
High school pregnancy is usually a black thing whether there’s a pact or not.
Why would they be having kids in gloster anyway? This whole state is a hellhole, property is overvalued there aren’t any good jobs and taxes are insane. Who’d want to raise a kid in MA?
It would be nice if the sperm donors did some time in prison on the receiving end. This would probably be a valuable lesson on saving yourself until marriage for the perps.
It’s called “Teenage girls want attention”.
When I was in the 9th grade, in 1986, 9 girls had babies. Yes, 9. Each one saw the other getting treated like an instant adult and also the ooohhhsss and aaahhhsss of babies babies babies. And the ‘instant’ latching onto the boy of their dreams didn’t help matters either.
Yes, some of these fathers were also over 18, don’t know if they were prosecuted as it would have interferred with the raising/child support of these new babies.
One of my friends was the first, although she didn’t intend to start the trend. She actually hid her pregnancy and we all talked about her gaining weight out of curiousity. I saw her stretch standing up one day and there was no denying the roundness of her belly and the gig was up. By that point I wasn’t the only one who noticed and her mother found out. She was six months along by then. I am 35 and it seems odd to me that her son is old enough to drink. She was 14 when he was born, husband was 16. Oddly enough, they are still married.
My 9th grade English teacher gave us all a lesson on the wonders of aspirin as birth control. You take an aspirin and place it between your knees, then don’t let it hit the floor. Works 100% of the time. ;O)
I find myself thinking with my 12 year old “What are you ON?”
Uhh, I think you are speaking rationally and logically about TEENAGERS!?!?!
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