USA – Media Frenzy on Alleged Teen “Pregnancy Pact” – Multiple Issues

7/02/08

By
Sheila Gibbons
WeNews Commentator

The media latched on to a Massachusetts high school “pregnancy
pact,” cooing with young mothers-to-be while clucking over high teen
pregnancy rates. But the real story was about cuts in preventive programs and
a lack of reproductive care for teens.

Editor’s Note: The following is a commentary. The
opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the views of
Women’s eNews.

(WOMENSENEWS)–Time
was when an unmarried pregnant teen would be spirited away to the home of a
distant relative, or a facility for unwed mothers, to have her baby and give
it up for adoption. Her family would make excuses about her absence. Then she
would return to school, and though classmates might snicker, little or
nothing would be said.

It happened to a friend of mine in the 1960s, a lively girl muffled by
secrecy and shame. There were no feel-good “Juno” or “Knocked
Up” moments for her, no giddy tales of how teen celebrity mom Jamie Lynn
Spears is furnishing her baby’s nursery. Movies and television rarely
depicted pregnancy, even within marriage. Stars who had out-of-wedlock
children hid them. Abortion was not yet legal.

Fast-forward to 2008 and the pregnancy boom at a Gloucester, Mass., high
school, where expectant students and teen mothers have been doing interviews
with major news organizations and television networks.

The explosion of media interest in June in the so-called “pregnancy
pact” of 17 students at Gloucester High School has left many wondering
what society in general, and these teens in particular, consider appropriate
social and sexual choices for them and others their age.

And wow, did the thought of all those young women supposedly going out of
their way to get pregnant attract the satellite trucks and microphones. They
are mostly gone now that the story has turned out to be, if not a
fabrication, a dramatic misperception.

Gloucester, about 30 miles north of Boston, is the United States’ oldest
seaport. Its once-robust fishing industry is in decline, and with that has
come diminished prospects for its working-class population of 30,000.
Gloucester was the setting for the film adaptation of “The Perfect
Storm,” the true story of fishermen’s desperate attempts to survive a
raging gale.

Media Frenzy
Erupted

Aptly, a perfect storm erupted when Time published a story June 18
(“Pregnancy Pact at Gloucester High”) quoting the school’s
principal, who said that the rather large number of pregnancies there was no
accident.

“Nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to
making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together,” Kathleen
Kingsbury reported. Time’s online article is illustrated by a photograph of a
very pregnant, nearly nude female in profile, a la Annie Leibovitz’s famous
1991 Vanity Fair cover photo of movie star Demi Moore.

After CNN, which is owned by Time’s parent company, also went with the
“pregnancy pact” headline, journalists descended on the city.
Gloucester Daily Times editor Ray Lamont, whose newspaper in March had
published Kristen Grieco’s original–and non-sensational–reports on the
Gloucester High baby boom, found himself doing interviews with BBC World
News, Irish Radio and New York’s WABC.

Some of the arriving journalists’ descriptions were cloying:
“Strollers and sippy cups will replace pencil cases and backpacks as the
must-have back-to-school items for more than a dozen pregnant Gloucester High
School students next year,” reported ABC News.

On “Good Morning America,” Chris Cuomo interviewed a Gloucester
High mom-to-be, 17, and her boyfriend, 20. Cuomo jumped right into the story
with them, saying that having a baby was the best thing that ever happened to
him and wishing the same for them, even whispering greetings to the fetus.

‘Pact’ Pregnant
With Purpose

A spike in pregnancies from four at Gloucester High last year to 17 this
year is one thing. A “pact,” however, is something else altogether.
The latter conjures up images of sophomores slinking through school hallways
with their backpacks, eyeing potential hook-ups who will happily fulfill
their part of the bargain.

By now people who’ve been following this story know there may not have
been any pact at all. Students and the mayor have denied it. The principal
Kingsbury interviewed won’t discuss it further. Time has replaced the word
“pact” with “boom” in the headline of its online article.

What everyone seems to agree on now is only that some of the teens
welcomed pregnancy. The assertion that there was a “pact” drew
media looking for a hot story, and possibly a teen trend.

The confidence that there had been a pact began evaporating within a few
days of Time’s report but not before CNN, MSNBC, CBS News, the Associated
Press and others had repeated the allegation, and it had been picked up by
news organizations and bloggers around the world, transformed into a tale of
maternal “girls gone wild.”

Lack of
Reproductive Health Access

What the ongoing reporting eventually did reveal were the fault lines
running through the ground on which Gloucester school and city officials,
health care professionals and the students stand with regard to teen
pregnancy and reproductive health.

What started as the national media’s breathless reporting about a teen
pregnancy clique led to more sober pieces explaining that school funding cuts
had eliminated Gloucester High’s sexuality education classes
(RHRealityCheck.org); that the school forbids the distribution of condoms and
other contraception without parental consent, a rule that prompted the
school’s doctor and nurse to resign in protest in May (Reuters); and that the
nearest clinic where teens can obtain birth control is 20 miles away
(Poynter.org).

“Rumors aside, one thing that is true is that you don’t have to walk
very far in Gloucester to find an unwed teenage mother,” ABC’s Anne-Marie
Dorning reported. “Baby-faced teens pushing baby carriages seem to be
everywhere.”

The director of the high school’s day care program for infants of students
boasted to Dorning that all four of last year’s student mothers went on to
college. That’s commendable, but we don’t know whether they’ll remain and
graduate. It’s a steep climb for student moms; according to the
Washington-based National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy,
only 41 percent of teens who begin families before age 18 complete high
school, let alone college.

Thankfully, we’ve grown more compassionate and supportive of pregnant
teens since my old friend’s pregnancy. There are good programs that can guide
them through a full-term pregnancy or an abortion, whichever they choose.
Societal disapproval of unmarried motherhood has waned as respect for
reproductive choice has increased and well-known women have chosen to become
parents outside of marriage. However, given the tongue-waggish tone of much
of the news coverage, overall the Gloucester students didn’t benefit much
from more generous attitudes toward single mothers.

Our understandable concern about the life-long health, psychological and
financial hazards for pregnant teens continues, and so should our concern
about the shortcomings of the reporting on the Gloucester students. What we
really needed from the journalists crowding into Gloucester was less shock
and awe and more probing about why girls would choose early pregnancy over
their freedom and their futures. Nowhere could I find interviews with
Gloucester teens (even speaking anonymously) who chose not to continue a
pregnancy, or who were using contraception to avoid pregnancy, or were
concerned about having so little access to either option.

The irony is that a teen pregnancy story becomes a sensation and leads the
news, but meaningful analysis of why so many very young women are making such
choices remains unexplored.