In the immortal words of gumshoe, Lieutenant Columbo, there's just one more thing to note about the Gloucester High School pregnancy unpact.  In the reams of words written about the 17 young women, in my view the very best comes from an editorial in the Norton Mirror in  MA.  An excerpt:

"While the armies of the Left and Right have spent 40 years fighting over sex---mostly through proxy battles on issues like sex education, parental notification and contraception---the culture forgot to teach children some fundamental things about parenthood...The real story at Gloucester High---and at high schools across the nation---isn't that kids have casual, uninformed attitudes toward sex.  It's that they know and care too little about what it takes to raise healthy children."

 Read the entire editorial.

Doubts are now being raised about whether there actually was a pregnancy pact among some of the students at Gloucester High.  Pact or no pact, the number of pregnant girls at that particular high school more than tripled in one year.  Alarming?  You betcha.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past 24 hours, you now know that several students from a high school in Gloucester, MA  apparently made a pact to become pregnant and raise their babies together. This news broke the very same day that 17-year old actress Jamie Lynn Spears gave birth to a baby girl.  Needless to say, these two events have  focused national attention on the issue of teen and unplanned pregnancy.

So, what do we think?  See below:

1.  Gloucester High Teens: selected press clips, resources for parents and educators, and other pertinent links, and a recent Pregnant Pause post on this issue

2.  Jamie Lynn Spears: The National Campaign statement, selected press clips, and resources for parents and educators

UPDATE:

Sarah Brown on the CBS Early Show, June 23rd

Also, check out The National Campaign's fearless leader Sarah Brown on the June 20th edition of The Today Show:

Keep an eye on TheNationalCampaign.org for up-to-date info on these and other stories.

This just in from Massachusetts about a pack of little girls who decided to get pregnant together.  This is exhibit #50928345 in a basic reality today: our culture and its constituent parts--parents, media, faith leaders, elected officials and more--have failed in one of our most critical and basic jobs, which is communicating to the next generation about what babies need and deserve.  And what are those things?  The list includes having adult parents who are deeply and sincerely committed to each other; who are willing to be active, devoted parents for decades; and who have done the best they can to get educated so that they and their children need not struggle with poverty.  I cannot believe that if these girls had been surrounded by a culture and families who were clear and explicit about these simple facts that they would have been so reckless.   

Why didn't they just go get tattoos together or do some other innocuous adolescent thing?  This Massachusetts story provides a possible answer:  casual, non-marital child-bearing among teens as well as older individuals has become so common and inconsequential that it actually now IS the consumer equivalent of a tattoo: meaningless.