Schoolchildren

Re Amber's fine post: The mayor of Gloucester, Massachusetts, announced that no evidence exists to support the claim that a group of young girls agreed to get pregnant and raise their babies together (although the girls' principal, who first said such a "pact" was made, has not retracted his earlier statements). Some don't buy it:

Gloucester resident Annette Dion, a 45-year-old private music teacher, said school and city officials should have done more to find out whether the girls truly made a pact to become pregnant. She said denying such a pact existed is "pretty naive."

"I don't think we heard the truth today," Dion said, adding that pop culture has glamorized teen pregnancy and that movies and celebrity pregnancies do not give girls an accurate picture of parenthood.

"My personal feeling, my impression, is they probably talked and discussed and thought it would be cool to get pregnant together," she said.

Brendan Henry, a 17-year-old going into his senior year at Gloucester, said the attention surrounding the alleged pact has taken the focus off bigger issues facing young people, including school underfunding. Still, he did not doubt that a pact could have existed.

"It definitely sounds like something that would happen at Gloucester High School," he said. "It doesn't sound too far fetched at all."

Regardless of what really happened, perhaps this story will help knock down some of the myths about teen pregnancy and give schools, which are under ever-increasing pressure to become health clinics, some room to breathe. Or maybe it will do the opposite.