Gloucester High School, a small school of 1,200 students located in the fishing port city of Gloucester, Mass., may seem like one of the many small, humble, and unassuming schools that dot the nation.
But most recently, in a national controversy that has raised issues concerning the rise of an increasingly glorified and sexualized culture, media reports have set off a firestorm after they traced the school’s quadruple rise in teen pregnancies this year to a supposed “pregnancy pact” that existed among 17 female students.
Although media reports on the verifiable existence of a “pregnancy pact” have been conflicted since Time Magazine broke the story last week, pro-family groups were quick to point out that regardless of whether there was a pregnancy pact or not, an abnormal amount of girls at the school were pregnant - an indicator of societal meltdown and failed sex education policies.
“The school offers free on-site daycare for teen moms so that students can bring their babies to school. It also teaches ‘comprehensive’ sex education to students in the ninth grade, just in time for high school,” the Family Research Council (FRC) noted in a statement.
“If the school is bending over backward to accommodate teen mothers and encouraging the promiscuity that leads to it, these girls would have no choice but to assume that premarital sex and motherhood are acceptable social norms,” the group explained.
The FRC also stressed that the recent rise of teen pregnancies at the school solidified and strengthened the case for abstinence-based only sex education in schools.
“On teen sex, it's time to stop treating the problem and start preventing it with the only birth control that is 100% effective—abstinence,” the group said.
The story about a supposed “pregnancy pact” among a group of Gloucester High School girls was first covered in a Time Magazine interview last week conducted with the school’s principal, Joseph Sullivan.
Sullivan said that the girls had agreed in a pact to raise their babies together and had celebrated their pregnancies with high-fives and baby showers.
In a statement released Monday, however, the mayor of the city vehemently denied that any pregnancy pact existed and has contested subsequent media reports covering the incident.
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Handing out condoms most likely had nothing to do with this, ditto for in-school abstinence education programs. Parental oversight probably had everything to do with this. I would bet a good many of these girls didn't have the support structures in place at home to keep this from happening.
Folks keep talking about the "homeless" guy one of the girls sought out - that is miss-categorizing it a little bit. He didn't live at home but was in the girls sphere of influence so it wasn't like she picked some 50 year old alcoholic bum off the street so she could get pregnant - she knew the guy, he no longer lived at home and he was 24 years old.
In times like this, one of my favorite sayings is "There but for the grace of God go I."
"In a statement released Monday, however, the mayor of the city vehemently denied that any pregnancy pact existed and has contested subsequent media reports covering the incident."
I saw the mayor saying this, I am honestly curious if she actually thought for more than ten minutes about this.
The teens gave each other high-fives, they put peer-pressure on others to have babies, one even went to a homeless guy in order to get pregnant, the teens went to the school nurse often to get pregnancy tests and were sad when they came out negative. No, no, no pregnancy pact, just you know, kids being kids. Give me a break! How did this person become mayor?
And another thing that really cracks me up is the fact that so many people are coming out and saying the reason is because the school did not hand out free condoms! Yeah... I am sure the kids who were trying to get pregnant would have thought about using protection, are people joking when they say these things...