Gentle reminder time friends. 

Although the official 2008 National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy has come and gone  (by the way, anyone have any ideas for a pithier title?), remember that May is Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month (again, title ideas anyone?) and the snappy National Day online quiz will be up and operating throughout the month. 

Please alert family, friends, neighbors, and enemies.  Take the quiz, you'll be glad you did.

Please, all of you, read this article from the New York Times.  It is, apparently, an award winning essay and there are more to come from the same competition that led to this one.  I love its pace and candor, and Marguerite Fields needs to immediately write more and start her own blog.  

For more information and to see what others around the country are doing to support the National Day, visit our National Day page the TheNationalCampaign.org. 

Authorities in Texas have removed 53 teen girls from a polygamist compound and they report that 31 of them are pregnant or have already had children.  That's 57% of the girls.  Creepy, dangerous, sad, shocking, awful - it seems like everyone has an opinion.  It also seems as if there are unlimited resources to deal with this problem.  Child Protective Services, the foster care system, law enforcement, the news media, the healthcare system, religious entities, groups like the ACLU - all these and more are concerned, engaged, watching, helping, hoping.

These girls and their children are important, and their fates and futures hang in the balance to be sure.  But what about the millions of other teenage girls in this country who are growing up in situations which lead them to teen pregnancy and childbearing?  There are communities all over the United States where more than half of girls get pregnant as teens.  Among Latina girls in this country, 53% get pregnant at least once as teens.  Among African American girls, 51%.  In fact, 30% of ALL teen girls in America get pregnant before age 20.  That means every state, every county, every community, every high school, and more and more junior high schools too.

Where is the outcry about these girls?  Where is the intervention?  Where is the government, the news media, the cultural intelligentsia?  Why are the little voices inside our heads that are asking so many questions about the FLDS girls - about their clothes, their lifestyles, their beliefs, their parents, their community - why are those voices so silent about the fates and futures of the girls elsewhere in this country?

One of those compound girls had a baby yesterday.  She delivered her son while child welfare officials, state troopers, reporters, and others waited outside the hospital maternity ward.  She is one of 750,000 teen girls who will have a baby this year.  Who is waiting for them?

Let mine be blogosphere comment 67 million regarding 15-year-old Miley Cyrus and the nude-but-covered photo of her that appears in the current issue of Vanity Fair. Three modest thoughts: 

1. A parent interviewed on Good Morning America this morning suggested that---I'm paraphrasing here---that the photo wasn't as bad as it could be...that you couldn't see the curve of Miley's back..that Annie Liebovitz is a respected photographer, etc.  Huh?  This is not a discussion about art and taste and nudity, this is a discussion about a 15-year-old girl who posed nude and the publication of that photo. 
2. The GMA segment went on to suggest that the Miley photo could serve as a teachable moment (now in the running as one of the most overused phrases of 2008).  What's the teachable moment here?  Fifteen year old girls shouldn't be asked to pose nude.  End of lesson. 
3. When this story broke yesterday about the Miley photo, the Vanity Fair website apparently crashed due to overwhelming traffic.  Remember people, it's not what they're selling, it's what you're buying.