I read an interesting article today about teenage pregnancy in a small town high school in Massachusetts. It is about 17 teenage high school girls, all under 16, who made a pact to all get pregnant, so they could raise their babies together. They thought it would be "cool" to get pregnant in high school.
The high school provides day care for their babies so they can remain in school. The problem with liberal policies is that they usually encourage the behavior that they are trying to discourage. Due to the "sex education" classes and encouraging pregnant teens to remain in school by providing "day care", they are normalizing and encouraging teenage sex and pregnancy. I have been a lone voice in saying that stigma and shame needs to be used to discourage teenage pregnancy. Instead the opposite is true, it is considered "cool" to be a pregnant teen these days. Tonight, for the first time, I heard a commentator on a cable news show, echo my sentiments. By providing day care and sex education, they are sending the kids a signal that it is OK to have sex and get pregnant in high school.
As I have written in previous articles, the movie "Juno" normalizes and minimizes teen pregnancy as just a small bump in the road of a cool teenager's life. The publicity that teen actress, Jamie Lynn Spears got after she got pregnant, also helped glamorize and make teenage pregnancy acceptable and even desirable to many teens. Government social programs also encourage this behavior with many programs that are designed to help pregnant teens, but actually encourage and enable teenage sex and pregnancy. Their parents won't mind so much because the baby food, doctors visits, diapers and babysitting will be paid for by government programs. I wonder if the parents of these girls were as nonchalant about their situation as the parents of Juno in the movie.
Click hear to read the article entitled "Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High"
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