Lord help us.
A pact to get pregnant? What were these girls thinking?
Oh wait. They weren't.
Report: Gloucester Teens Had Pact To Get Pregnant
GLOUCESTER (WBZ) ― There's a stunning twist to the sudden rise in teen pregnancies at Gloucester High School. 17 students there are expecting and, according to a published report, most of them became that way on purpose. Time Magazine is reporting that nearly half of the girls confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. None of the girls is older than 16.
Principal Joseph Sullivan said that wasn't all that was shocking. "We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy," he told Time.
Last month, two top officials at the high school's health center resigned in a fight over contraceptives distribution. Medical Director Dr. Brian Orr and chief nurse practitioner Kim Daly support confidentially giving contraceptives to students. They were outraged about resistance from Addison Gilbert Hospital, which administers the state public health grant that funds the school clinic.
Normally, the school has about four pregnancies per school year. According to Time, school officials started looking into the spike in pregnancies after an unusual number of girls came to the school clinic for pregnancy tests. Some came by several times. "Some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Sullivan told the magazine.
The pregnant girls and their parents turned down requests to be interviewed. A recent graduate who had a baby during her freshman year told Time she knows why the girls wanted to get pregnant. "They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally," Amanda Ireland, 18, said. "I try to explain it's hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m."
