You may remember that both Amber and Liam first alerted us to, and then wrote on, what's now being called the Gloucester pregnancy pact--that a group of sophomore girls in Gloucester, MA decided to get pregnant and raise their babies en masse. Well, Time's Editor-at-Large Nancy Gibbs thinks the Gloucester incident should be interpreted differently.
In a July 7 article appropriately titled "Give the Girls a Break," Gibbs argues that the lesson is not that there are more teen pregnancies or that we should find the "anecdotal evidence" supporting the pact "certainly troubling." (Wow Nancy, I award you the understatement of the year award.) Instead, she says, maybe this incident is an indication of changing teenage attitudes about abortion. I'm not going to go near the validity of this conclusion; what I'm interested in is the absolute insanity of her argument. Gibbs decides that teenage girls (and boys) have more respect for life because the Gloucester girls kept their babies. Wait a second... wasn't the whole controversy over this slew of pregnancies about the fact the babies were planned? (And maybe the fact that one of the fathers was a 24-year-old homeless guy--as reported by Gibbs's own magazine).
The best part is that she starts the article with the following observation: "You know you've found a perfect cultural touchstone when everyone brushes past it on the way to opposite conclusions." Well done, Nancy.
