High School Baby Boom

From Carol Platt Liebau over at Townhall:

Time Magazine is running a story out of Gloucester, MA, about a group of teen girls -- none older than 16 -- who made a pact to get pregnant.

Apparently the school noticed an increase in girls visiting the school nurse for pregnancy tests and found out a group of them had decided to get pregnant and raise their children together.

Liebau continues:

Remarkably, the piece goes on:

Even with national data showing a 3% rise in teen pregnancies in 2006--the first increase in 15 years--Gloucester isn't sure it wants to provide easier access to birth control.

Wait just a minute. How, exactly, would "easier access to birth control" have impacted this situation? These girls decided to get pregnant on purpose.

Note the mention in passing that teen pregnancy rates are on the rise, and the implicit assumption that handing out condoms in schools--or giving girls birth control pills without their parents' knowledge, which was proposed at this high school--is the solution.

Liebau has done a lot of thinking on this issue and has even written a book, Prude, about our sex-obssessed culture. She has some more interesting thoughts on the Time article.

The problem underlying teen pregnancy isn't practical (access to or knowledge of contraceptives) or even biological. It's an ethical, moral and spiritual problem. It's a matter of inadequate attention being paid to the formation of young people's character and values.

Apparently the girls wanted to have babies so someone would love them unconditionally. Liebau closes this way:

As for being loved unconditionally -- where are the churches? Isn't
the key part of the good news that Someone already has that covered?