Reply #7: The story should have legs, whether the girls made a pact or [View All]

[enlightenment]

not. There is something desperately wrong when 17 girls sixteen and younger are pregnant at one, relatively small high school. It is NOT a good thing. It's not freedom, it's not autonomy. It is unbelievably stupid - and it's not morality that makes me say that. Just common sense. Something that these girls - and many, many more like them - obviously lack.

I teach college. In the last few years I've had four female students - two were 18, one 17, one 20 - who were pregnant and utterly clueless. I have pregnant women in my classes all the time, some married, some not; but those four stood out because they all said that they got pregnant on purpose because they thought it would be fun to have a baby. They all wore skin tight garments to show off their "bumps" and not one had given any thought at all to what this would mean to their lives and the lives of the fetuses they carried. They looked on their pregnancies like they were fashion accessories. It made my hair stand on end.

It's not morality that has people in a fizzit, lolly. I'm sure there are folks that care about nothing but that, but there are many more who are simply concerned that young women are growing increasingly incapable of making rational choices. There is nothing rational about deliberately getting pregnant at fifteen or sixteen. Nothing.

The principal may have been wrong to spread the story of a pact - but he's not wrong to be very concerned about what is happening at his school.