Girls in Gloucester High School are getting themselves pregnant. On purpose. Here is the story from CNN.com: Pregnancy Pact.

I’ve seen coverage on this on a number of news organizations in the past couple of days and it seems as though most of the guest speakers are clueless. They complain about the lack of contraceptive distribution rights to the kids at school. In fact two health center workers at the school resigned out of protest because of this. Three of the headlines on the Gloucester Times website have to do with a push for birth control. One headline only suggests that health education cuts “may” have contributed to this pregnancy boom. This past school year, the school had given 150 pregnancy tests out to students. There are 1200 students at this school.

Open your ears and eyes here people. These girls wanted to get pregnant. They made a “pact” to get pregnant. Do you see what I’m getting at?

I’m not a certified sex doctor, but I’m someone with a good amount of common sense. First of all, I’ve never heard of a High School that is so concerned with administering pregnancy tests. Second, why be more concerned about providing a service for children to confidentially learn if they are pregnant, but not offer contraception? But most of all, where is your health education, and why aren’t parents more involved in this? You don’t have to break confidentiality agreements to let parents know that their kids might be getting pregnant. In my high school, if there was a problem that was growing throughout the student body, a letter would be sent home to every parent. No names would be given but every parent would be made aware of the problem at hand and urged to talk to their children. If this does anything, it will probably make any parent ask their children who in school is pregnant. There is your start. Parent/child communication. Even if it starts as gossip. I can’t think of any parent who isn’t locked in his or her room with a heroine needle stuck in between their toes that wouldn’t be concerned that maybe her kid might be a part of this pregnancy binge.

I can’t think of any other reason that a young girl would want to have a baby than a severe lack of love in their life. Or a lack of strong education. Health education isn’t just about sperm, eggs, testicles and ovaries. It’s not about condoms, its not about sexually transmitted diseases. It’s about teaching young people about responsibility. This is not responsibility for money or for time management or schoolwork. This is about responsibility of another life. It’s about teaching young people about what their future can bring to them. It’s about giving them a basic understanding of life’s structure. It’s about showing them a world of work out there. Working with them towards scholarships and community services. Getting their mind on good things that show them that they can do good in the world. I’m getting too deep into my own opinions right now but this is reality.

It’s important to teach children that a family is a wonderful thing. Having a baby isn’t a bad thing. But it’s a life changing responsibility that should not be taken lightly by anyone.

Not everyone has a model family. I understand this. This is why it’s important for schools to be family for these children. A good family doesn’t skip the lesson and deal with the problem. For example, my mom and dad wouldn’t skip teaching me about sex and responsibility of a family and just go out and buy me a pregnancy test or a condom. Schools need to take responsibility for their children.

There are people blaming the movie “Juno,” and the movie “Knocked Up,” for “promoting teen and unwed pregnancies.” Are these kind of arguments going to get old at all? When I was in elementary school, my parents had willingly let me see movies like Point Break, which included killings, bank robberies, sex, nudity, and heavy cursing. They’d let my sister see movies like Pretty Woman, a movie about prostitution, or Dirty Dancing, a movie containing unwed sex and an abortion. But somehow these movies never influenced me to do any of those things. Because my parents never let me see anything or go through anything without a lesson attached to it.

The Gloucester community has a good deal of work ahead of them to fix this problem. And handing out condoms or birth control pills is not the answer. But this is a big problem. This goes beyond accidental teen pregnancies. And it doesn’t stop in Gloucester. It’s a shame because problems like this are way more important in our country but have (rightfully so) had to take a back seat to things like gas, energy, money, and war.