My mother waited until 30 to become pregnant with me. “I wanted to enjoy my time with your father,” she said. “Once a baby comes, everything changes.”

This may have been my first “talk” with my parents about love, pregnancy and everything that is involved.

When I read about Gloucester High School in Massachusetts, a blue-collar city with deep-seated Catholic roots, who witnessed 17 underage pregnancies this school year – more than quadruple last year’s average of four – and how the principal credited the pregnancies to a “pact” among several of the girls, my mouth dropped.

Thinking of my mother’s stories about raising me, I could not wrap my mind around why young girls would want to ascribe their lives intentionally before their lives even truly began.

Questions have flared around the country: What if the 2007 movies Juno and Knocked Up did not “glamorize” pregnancy, or if Massachusetts had not rejected federal funds for “abstinence only” education at Gloucester High, or if the school’s health clinic would have been allowed to distribute birth control pills, or if the girls parents would have done or said something differently when having “the talk?”

The June 19 broadcast of “CBS Evening News” went so far as to fault the ailing economy for the girls agreeing to get pregnant around the same time so they could “raise children together.”

Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk said last month that the school committee would review a city policy prohibiting the distribution of birth control in schools as it revamps Gloucester’s teen-pregnancy policy.

Some have argued that the girls should be given a break, such as Nancy Gibbs in the June 25 Time Magazine article.

“Surely they (Gloucester girls) deserve more sympathy and support than shame and derision, if the trend they reflect is not a typical teenager’s inclination to have sex but rather a willingness to take responsibility for the consequences,” Gibbs wrote.

Kay S. Hymowitz’s article, “Gloucester Girls Gone Wild, The Pregnancy Pact,” also suggests that these girls are not to blame for their actions. She cites Kathleen Parker’s new book Save the Males: Americans aren’t all that keen on fathers these days, explaining that women can “bypass the husband problem” and mockingly suggests that all men are bums anyway.

She claims that there is an epidemic of “fatherlessness” and that “if some bored and aimless teens decide to give single motherhood a whirl, who can be surprised?”

Possibly Gibbs and Hymowitz are correct that these girls are taking responsibility for their actions. However, it was the initial action of becoming pregnant with random (sometimes homeless) men in order to become pregnant that does not deserve sympathy.

It is true that the nation’s teenage pregnancy rate is rising for the first time since 1991 – birthrates for teenagers age 15 to 17 rose by three percent between 2005 and 2006 according to preliminary data released in December by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

However, what is different about these 17 Gloucester High girls from most other underage girls who became pregnant is that they had an intention of becoming mothers.

If one were to take a pinch from each question asked and suggestion provided about the Gloucester High story, s/he would probably come to some sort of truthful analysis about the decision-making process behind this story.

While more studies need to be done on teen pregnancies, specifically this case, for me it is the ignorance behind the girls’ decision that is most unsettling. Raised by two parents who were open and understanding about my questions and a school district (Eden, New York) that practiced comprehensive sex education, I was raised in an approachable environment about these issues.

But can it be as simple as that? My friends, peers and I have all made stupid mistakes growing up. All children do.

My question is: whom could the girls go to, besides each other, to talk about all of the issues at hand? That may be the root of the problem.

Originally published Sunday, July 6 2008