Juno Is Popular In Gloucester
TEEN PREGNANCY PACT HAS LOCAL OFFICIALS IN DENIAL
FITSNews – June 24, 2008 – Seventeen girls at a high school in Gloucester, Massachusetts made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together, sparking a wave of parental unrest and throwing local officials into a state of denial. Refusing to acknowledge the existence of a “pregnancy pact,” Gloucester’s mayor chose instead to blame a lack of government intervention along with the “glorification of pregnancy” in films like Juno and the real-life saga of Jamie Lynn Spears, who is a mom at the ripe old age of seventeen.
From the story:
(Gloucester Mayor Carolyn) Kirk said none of the school’s health workers who deal with the girls on a daily basis had heard any mention of a pact. Instead, she attributed the pregnancies to a lack of funding for health education because of increased spending needed to meet federally mandated standards known as No Child Left Behind.
She also blamed the media’s “glamorization of pregnancy” and “movies that depicted teen pregnancy as something to be desired.”
Apparently Kirk feels that if the school had just handed out more condoms, none of this would have happened. Oh, and it’s all Ellen Page’s fault for being such a damn good actress.
Seriously, people … the fact that seventeen girls all got pregnant at once (at a school where only four typically get pregnant in a year) isn’t normal. The jury is still out on whether it will end up being a good or bad thing for these kids (the girls and their babies), but to presume it happened because of a movie or because we didn’t have enough government-mandated sex education is the height of lunacy. Perhaps in Kirk’s perfect world all these girls would have abortions and everybody could go on their merry, politically-correct way, but clearly the “Gloucester 17″ had other ideas …
Comments
By CL on June 24th, 2008 at 8:42 am
We all know the “progressives” in Gloucester aren’t asking for funding of abstinance programs or in any way criticizing the students for having sex. So apparently the mayor would have preferred that Juno had an abortion to avoid glorifying life – I mean “pregnancy.”
Nothing “glorifies” teen pregnancy more than the efforts of this high school to encourage this type of behavior:
“The high school has done perhaps too good a job of embracing young mothers. Sex-ed classes end freshman year at Gloucester, where teen parents are encouraged to take their children to a free on-site day-care center. Strollers mingle seamlessly in school hallways among cheerleaders and junior ROTC. “We’re proud to help the mothers stay in school,” says Sue Todd, CEO of Pathways for Children, which runs the day-care center.”
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1815845,00.html
A little peer pressure and social stigmatization would have prevented this ridiculous pact.
By Margaret on June 24th, 2008 at 10:51 am
I completely agree about peer pressure and stigmatization. That’s what kept ME honest back in the day! But fat chance in today’s culture. According to the Gloucester school superintendent, motherhood will give these teenagers “status.” That’s the actual word he used. Status.
Just posted my own take on the situation…
http://www.lcweekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=623&Itemid=94&mosmsg=Item+successfully+saved.
By Thanksgivingmom on June 24th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
The idea to blame Juno about this is making me sick myself – I just wrote about this very issue on my blog as well (http://thanksgivingmom.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/juno-vs-the-state-of-massachusetts/)…gotta point a finger somewhere, and no one in Gloucester is directly responsible for the movie, so that seems like a good target. Ah, the logic…