The latest twist in the Gloucester pregnancy saga came last weekend, when 17
unwed teenage mothers of that working-class Massachusetts fishing village
became the butt of jokes at a parade hosted by a wealthier neighboring
community, Beverly Farms.
Although it typically spoofs politicians and celebrities, this year's
"Horribles Parade" included three floats aimed at shaming the pregnant teens of
Gloucester High School. The floats featured flying condoms, a mock birthing
scene, poems about Gloucester's "tramps" and gyrating teenage girls wearing
pillows stuffed under skin-tight mini-dresses. Most slogans on the floats were
unprintable, aside from this: "Knock 'em up high where expectations are low -
Gloucester, Ma."
The floats drew laughter and applause from many parade-goers, with some Boston
columnists opining that the Gloucester girls got what they deserved.
Never mind that Gloucester officials have backpedaled from earlier claims that
the school's four-fold increase in teen pregnancies this year resulted from a
pact students made to get pregnant. Or that the only one of the girls to sit
for a national interview has said that no such pact existed, only a
post-pregnancy agreement between friends to support each others' decision to
bear their babies.
Such facts interfere with the blame game that allowed us to direct all of our
fear, fury and shame about our sex-saturated culture at a handful of teenage
girls who had the nerve to break one of its unspoken rules.
That rule wasn't a taboo against teenage sex. No culture seriously opposed to
teenage sex would pummel children with so many movies, TV shows, song lyrics,
Internet images and "safe-sex" messages that say sex is just another contact
sport for which condoms offer sufficient preparation and protection. In a
society truly concerned about the emotional, social and moral consequences of
teenage promiscuity, our most prominent pundits would not react to news that
one-quarter of American teenage girls are infected with sexually transmitted
diseases by blaming chastity proponents for talking too much about abstinence.
We tend to think kids merely are being kids when they engage in sex, but
teenagers often feel pressured into sex by adults as well as peers. A 2007
National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy survey of teens found 59 percent
believe teen girls receive the message that "attracting boys and looking sexy
is one of the most important things they can do" and 62 percent believe teen
boys receive the message that they are "expected to have sex." About
three-quarters say TV depictions of teen pregnancy make them consider sex's
consequences more and the media should highlight such consequences more often.
Highlighting those consequences is less fun for entertainment producers and
consumers than ignoring them, of course. And modeling in our own lives the
sexual self-restraint we say we want from teenagers takes more discipline than
throwing up our hands and lamenting that kids will be kids.
Which brings us back to the line the Gloucester girls crossed. They dared to
engage in sex without rejecting its most natural consequence: babies. Their
refusal to destroy the evidence of their sexual choices exposed them to a
shaming ritual millions of girls dodge by ducking into an abortion clinic. Had
the Gloucester girls made an abortion pact instead of a pregnancy pact, we
never would have known.
Perhaps the Gloucester girls kept their babies for less than altruistic
reasons. The circumstances of their pregnancies certainly are not ideal. They
should not be feted as celebrities or heroines. They are neither.
But neither do they deserve a triple heaping of scorn for reminding our puerile
post-sexual revolution culture of a truth it tries so desperately to ignore:
that sex and babies go together, whether we like it or not.
Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St. Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.
