Groups Say 'Pregnancy Pact' in Mass. Town Strengthens Argument for Abstinence
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.
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"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.
