In many cases, pregnant and parenting students are told outright that they can’t stay in school or must go to an alternative school, which all too often offer substandard educations. Girls from around the country tell the same stories: When they got pregnant or had a child, a principal, counselor, or teacher told them they’d have to leave school. Despite this fact, many schools fail to help pregnant and parenting teens stay in school, and some actually exclude or punish them. Since 1972, when Title IX was enacted, it has been illegal for schools to exclude pregnant and parenting students from school. Approximately 70 percent of teenage girls who give birth leave school, and, evidence suggests that illegal discrimination is a major contributing factor to this high dropout rate. This has been corrected.Pregnant and parenting teens face enormous challenges in accomplishing their educational goals. The original said "teenage pregnancy" is portrayed in films such as Knocked Up. This article was amended on 16 November 2011. Commentators have pointed to films portraying pregnancy in a humorous and empathetic light such as Juno and Knocked Up. In Gloucester, a town of 30,000, speculation around the girls' motives has focused on the media. "The problem with the policy is that it says nothing to those teenagers who do have sex," he said. Though it is impossible to say why the tailing off has happened, he pointed to the Bush administration's $1bn programme to promote abstinence rather than contraception. Landry said that underlying statistics showed that improvements in reproductive health - particularly the use of condoms - achieved through the 1990s had stagnated since around 2003. ![]() It is too early to know whether this is the start of a trend. Nationally, records showed a steady decline in teenage birth rates from 1991 to 2005, with most of the fall due to greater use of contraception.īut in 2006 birth rates for girls aged 15 to 17 rose by 3%. Gloucester's conundrum falls at an already anxious time for teenage pregnancies in America. This is the first time I've heard of anything like it," said David Landry of the Guttmacher Institute, which promotes reproductive health. A local provider of reproductive health education has slashed its outreach staff from eight to one full-time worker.Įxperts in teenage sexual behaviour were baffled by the events in Gloucester, which are unprecedented. The state of Massachusetts has also been cutting back on sex education in schools as part of its budgetary belt-tightening. ![]() In the absence of provision by the clinic, students must travel 20 miles to the nearest women's health clinic. The hospital authorities made it clear they were anxious about the reaction to handing out contraception from the strongly Catholic local community. In May the medical director and nurse at the school clinic resigned in protest at the refusal of the local hospital that controls their funds to allow them to distribute contraceptives to pupils without parental consent. The disclosure of the pact, and reports that one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless man, has sparked a spirited debate in Gloucester about teenage sex. ![]() ![]() We understand that some of them were together talking about being pregnant and that being a positive thing for them," he told Associated Press. Others reacted to positive test results with high fives, talking about how they would hold a celebration for the baby.Ĭhristopher Farmer, the school superintendent, said inquiries were started when the number reached 10. The head, Joseph Sullivan, told Time magazine that some of the girls seemed upset when they received negative results. By May, the health clinic reported that an unusual number of girls were still asking for pregnancy tests. Teachers at the 1,200-student Gloucester high school first noticed something strange last October when several girls began visiting the school health clinic to request pregnancy tests.īy March the number of pregnant girls in the school had risen to 10 and officials were alarmed.
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