Jezebel
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Joseph Sullivan, the principal of Gloucester High School who told Time magazine that some of the girls at his school had made a now infamous "pregnancy pact," has resigned. Sullivan quit after the mayor of Gloucester and other school officials held a press conference (to which Sullivan was not invited) and denied that the pact existed. Sullivan claims that the mayor has "publicly slandered my reputation, my integrity and my intelligence." Hey, while adults are arguing over the existence of a pregnancy pact, teens are still getting pregnant thanks to inept sexual education programs that vilify sex and ignore teen girls' need for birth control and safe-sex options! How about they focus on that right now? [AP]
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blame diablo cody
Teenage Girls Aren't As Stupid As Some People Think
Another day, another dollar, another article bemoaning the fact that Hollywood doesn't feel the need to stigmatize and slut-shame teenagers who get pregnant. This time, writer Sarah Kliff says that young Hollywood mothers and movies/TV shows like Juno and The Secret Life of the American Teenager supposedly glamorize teen pregnancy and will make young women go, wow, that doesn't seem quite so bad! Because, really, that's what every single teen girl does, right? Ellen Page is so cute, and it's totally not a fictional story or anything and being pregnant is so fun la-la-la-la you're not listening to any other media messages and oh, did you notice that the supposed Gloucester pregnancy pact was formulated around that time or something? It's obviously going to make teenage pregnancy cool again! Or, you know, for the first time. Or, you know, not at all because most teenage girls realize that pregnancy can delay or outright squash certain kinds of dreams. More » -
womb raiders
Is It About Time We Made A "Pregnancy Pact" Of Our Own?
The conventional wisdom holds that media types are biased in favor of the Theory of Evolution. So why is it all they seem to print these days are stories hellbent on convincing us that the WRONG PEOPLE are procreating?? No doubt you, too, spent more time over the past few months consuming the latest on the Duggar family and the Spears family, that mysteriously-coiffed cult of inbreds in the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Pedophiles and the seventeen bored teenagers' homeless deadbeat boyfriends than you did having unprotected sex. But is that good for the future of society? The Yemeni man who sold his 8-year-old daughter to the 30-year-old child molester only did it because he had 15 other children to feed on his panhandling income. And yet three thousand miles northwest in an unspeakably gorgeous town in Italy, the week's New York Times Magazine informs us, the mayor is paying women ten thousand Euros for every baby they can make. More » -
Knocked Up
Writer Blames Second Wave Feminists For Failing To Prevent Teen Pregnancy
ABC Family's much-hyped teen pregnancy drama The Secret Life of an American Teenager debuts tonight and that, coupled with the Gloucester High baby explosion, has inspired a slew of articles discussing the state of barely-legal uteri. Christopher Caldwell of the Financial Times claims that the current "ideology" of teen pregnancy was devised by "baby-boom feminists" who are pushing their career-minded priorities on a lower class that wants nothing to do with Friedan-style goals. "As it gets harder to climb out of the class one was born in, the opportunity cost of being a young mother falls…Poor teen mothers 'have about the same long-term earnings trajectories as similarly disadvantaged youth who wait until their mid or late twenties to have a child'" Caldwell notes. "Given the increasing likelihood that a woman will raise her children alone, might not the teen years be a prudent time to become a single mother, while the financial and day-care resources of one’s own parents are still available?" More » -
Teen Mama Drama
Teen Mom Denies Pregnancy Pact; Principal Stands By His Story
The Gloucester "pregnancy pact" continues to make news, both in the United States and abroad. Though almost all of the knocked up kids have refused to speak to the press about the alleged "blood oath" for which they all agreed to get pregnant together by any means necessary (rumor is that one of the fathers is a local homeless man), one 17-year-old, Brianne Mackey, has told her story to the Guardian. Brianne, who gave birth to daughter Karlee earlier this month, says, "I found out I was pregnant and dealt with it on my own. It was a mistake. I didn't plan to get pregnant or anything like that." She says she heard about the pact from television, though apparently the local paper, the Gloucester Daily Times, "has been reporting since March with several reliable sources, some of the girls appeared actively to be trying for babies, throwing high fives when the test results were positive and looking glum when they came back negative," the Guardian notes. More » -
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Carolyn Kirk, the Mayor of Gloucester, Massachusetts, says that the teen "pregnancy pact" the country is up in arms about has "not been confirmed." Despite the fact that 17 Gloucester High girls, all 16 or younger and most of them sophomores, all became pregnant this spring, because "the high school principal is the one who initially [called it a pregnancy pact], and no one else has said it," Kirk tells the AP, it might not exist. The mayor is holding a meeting today with school and health officials to discuss the alleged pact. As noted earlier, Dr. Brian Orr and Nurse Practitioner Kim Daly quit their jobs with the school district after the spate of pregnancies because their plan to provide confidential contraception was nixed. [AP via LAT]
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