US probes teen 'pregnancy pact'

Source: BBC News

Officials in the US state of Massachusetts are investigating how 17 teenage girls from the same school have become pregnant.

The number is four times as high as the year before at Gloucester High School.

There are reports that some of the girls - none of whom is older than 16 - entered into a pact to have their babies together.

The girls and their families have so far made no comment. Officials are also investigating the ages of the fathers.


Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7464925.stm

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Gives a whole new meaning to the expression "being in the club" as in "pudding club". I aasume that english expression is used in the USA ?

Though I am far more fond of cake and ice cream.

or are you just thinking about your own dick?

It might be the fantasy of people who write "pregger porn," but having to deal with 17 unwanted babies...and 17 mothers who are fantasizing that having a kid will fix the problems of their miserable lives...isn't very funny or erotic at all.

The sad part is that the joke aspects of this situation will live long after the tragic realities.

jokes - it's just not funny - it's pathetic

I'm afraid to ask, but WTH is that?

"Pregger porn" is where guys impregnate women, sometimes against their will, quite often against their wishes. It's a form of forcing women to do the one thing this type of man believes they are good at - getting fat and dumpy and popping out babies. It's a very inhuman form of sexism, perhaps only exceeded by snuff porn. And don't tell me you don't know what THAT is.

I had never heard of that before. I thought you might be talking about porn involving pregnant women as a special category of kink.

please, enlighten us.

They planned to have those kids and they even found fathers. So you're "unwanted babies" assertion is incorrect.

Every one of the babies born from this situation is probably going to end up in a miserable, impoverished situation.

nt

or when the father flees? or when 16-year-old mom find out she can no longer do 16-year-old things because of parental responsibilities? (who am i kidding; the teen's parents will probably raise the kid anyway) or when she has to choose this month between food and pediatric bills? or when the baby is crying every night, all night? or when the teen mom finally (if ever) realizes she made a horrible mistake just for the sake of being down with her friends? or when she has to postpone college and work a couple of wage-slave jobs just to survive?

can anyone really say these girls actually took time to think about the future consequences of this action?

The baby itself is not a horrible mistake. There is a potential bright side to this if these girls can raise good healthy babies.

If and only if these teens are committed and have a STRONG support net from their parents, who will be doing the heavy parental/financial gruntwork at least until teen mom graduates high school...And if she hasn't already, teen mom needs to get the child support paperwork pushed through asap (even though the pinhead who bred with the homeless and almost certainly jobless slacker is SOL)...Lastly, teen mom needs to grow up and drop the mentality of babies being fashion accessories/toys/live dress-up dolls/a cure for ongoing life problems/something to make the girls in 5th period algebra jealous/a substitute for the love she isn't getting elsewhere and realize the seriousness of the lifelong responsibility she has signed up for...

These poor little kids are being set up for failure before they have even been born.

nt

One of them is a 24 yr old homeless guy.

http://www.green960.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=104668&article=3851669

yes, what a miracle. teenage girls were able to find a male to fuck them.

:eyes:

" having a kid will fix the problems of their miserable lives "

Or rather, that's not QUITE it. Up until the 1960's, many women found a great sense of purpose in having children. For about 20-40 years, that's been counterbalanced by feminism.... but I think the pendulum is swinging back, and hard.

I have a Little Sister who is pregnant. I cried when I found out, but she didn't see it as "the end of the world". It would have been the end of mine... but this is a different time.

Trust me, seeing teenagers and young women having children out of wedlock upsets me a great deal. But the idea that intentional pregnancy is a "fix for a miserable life" is a croc. For many of these girls, it's the start of a wonderful, timeless tradition.

Shift the paradigm, please.

Apparently, about half of the pregnant girls at the school agreed to get pregnant and raise their babies together. It sounds like they were looking for a sense of family with each other and their babies, something they may not be getting from their adult families at home. All of the girls in the pact had just finished their freshman or sophomore years at the high school. So this is a group of very young mothers-to-be. :(

and think that a baby will give it to them. This is very sad, because it shows their own neediness--and a total lack of understanding of what it means to raise a child. I shudder to think what their family life is like. The only way to obtain unconditional love I know of is to get a puppy. Yet, if they vow to raise their children "together", and had someone to guide them on their way, it might be better than raising a child on their own. But I fear there will be no "wise person" to help them.

god, they are so young. I hope at this point, their families are pulling together and making the best of a very difficult situation.

"...so I'll have someone who loves me." I've tried to tell them that the baby will be incapable of loving anyone for a while, and will demand all of their time and attention for years, but it just doesn't sink in.

These kids are so tragic.

Something in this society needs to change to give everyone a greater sense of connection and value. Something, or some series of things, must change in the way we deal with each other. Nobody running for office would dare to talk about this.

Years ago(and actually when she was at the age that this could have happened)Janis Ian wrote a song about this phenomenon. If you can find her first album, the one where she sings "Society's Child", this is on it.

HAIR OF SPUN GOLD

When I was just the age of five
My world had just come live
Wonderous things to see and be done
All that I could think of was fun

With hair of spun gold
Lips of ruby red
And eyes as deep as the deepest sea

When I was just the age of ten
My life had been changed again
I threw away all my childish toys
And worked on getting noticed by boys

And when I was just thirteen years of age
Going steady was all the rage
My mother picked out the cutest boy
My little leather-jacketed toy

And hair of spun gold
Turned to black as night
And the ruby red lips
Turned to pale pink

When I was fifteen years of age
He had my hand in marriage
And when fifteen years of age
In my arms I held my babe

And now I'm twenty-one
And I feel my life's over and done
And I'm looking down on my little child
Wondering, wondering if she'll be so wild

She's got hair of spun gold
Lips of ruby red
And eyes as deep as the deepest sea

When I'm looking down on my little child
I swear she'll have the time
There'll be time to love
There'll be time to learn
But childish memories she won't burn
We'll find time to laugh
We'll find time to play
She won't have to throw her toys away
I swear to you we'll wait for time
To take its time

Curiously close to the location of Innsmouth before the US Treasury Department destroyed it.

Strange coincidence?

I think not.

Someone in the area should check the phone book and see if there's a listing for the Esoteric Order of Dagon.

If so there'll be some strange looking kids in the future. :)

:)

Once they have their babies, they 'll move on to heroin addiction. Big problem in Gloucester, all those fishing boats. They bring in more than just cod & haddock.

BTW, H.P. Lovecraft was from Providence, RI, a hundred miles or more to the south of Cape Ann.

I used to work with a graphic artist who sometimes plays guitar in rock bands. In the '70s he lived in Massachussets, and actually made a little money playing bar gigs.

One evening he was playing with a band in a little dive in Gloucester. There were just a few drunk fishermen and a couple of hookers in the bar. It was very slow.

Suddenly, four biker-looking guys burst in, descended on the bartender and demanded money. "We want our cut right now!" The bartender obliged, emptying out the cash register.

The men quickly left through the back door. The bartender calmly went back to business.

My friend asked "Aren't you gonna call the cops?"

"You kidding?" said the bartender, "Those WERE the fucking cops!"

I'm convinced there is no use of the word "pudding" that is common on both sides of the Atlantic.

I just had black pudding the other day. Buddy, that ain't pudding.

the most common expression for this situation are - the pudding club, up the stick, and a bun in the oven. That has been so going back at least as far as the 1950's. None of them, to my knowledge, are regarded as being offensive.

Or "knocked up". Or "in the family way". Or "in the trailer park way".

I meant it that the word "pudding" is just used a whole lot more often in the UK than the US; we use it to mean a particular kind of custard. We still sometimes call hasty pudding that, but we're just as likely to call it mush. (I think the name "hasty pudding" only survived because it's in "Yankee Doodle".) So, a lot of expressions that have to do with "pudding" don't make it across the Atlantic, since "pudding" means a lot of things in the UK that it doesn't in the US.

If I abuse alcohol, drugs, live in unsanitary conditions, ect., I am deemed unable to raise a child and it is taken from me.

In what fantasy world can a 15 year old adequately raise a baby?

Same as any other country I guess.

all of the news about Brittney Spears, her sister, lots of the young celebrities getting pregnant recently. Maybe they are their role models or whatever. They fail to realize, among so many other things that those girls have mega dollars to take care of those babies with and hire people to do anything needed.

I feel sorry for these girls, I hope they receive the proper guidance and help.

That had not occurred to me. I totally ignore most celebrity hype.

The high school already had a day care center so this had to be an ongoing problem.

My biggest concern about this, besides of course kids having kids, is the press it's getting. Not to say I think this story should be hidden but why are school officials giving interviews? Do they think emphasizing this "pact" will absolve them and the community of responsibility.

made this decision. Of course the babies born from this situation will be the worst off of all.
I agree that it has gotten a lot of press. The entire community should be focusing on getting these girls help and finding out the reasons for this decision. And sometimes that's more complicated than just asking them. :-(

cousin all decided to have babies at l7 years old. This is a teenage fad. The girls live at home and their folks take care of the babies for the most part, especially financially. None of them are "college oiented" and to say the least, their lives are petty boring except for the attention they get when they take their kids out. They can't and don't want to work, and the baby is a good excuse. The "fathers" are not in the picture, but the kids are being raised well and tend to have an overabundance of toys and stylish clothes perhaps to compensate for not having a second parent. This is very common nowadays. My friend even has her grandchild on her health insurance so she is fully covered until she is 25.

Idiocracy here we come