Remember that "Pregnancy Pact" by girls in Gloucester, Massachusetts, first reported in Time magazine? It's looking more and more like it wasn't.
June 23, 2008 - From the New York Times:
Doubt was also expressed by the local newspaper that had been covering the surge in pregnancies long before Time. Patrick Anderson, the lead reporter on the story for The Gloucester Daily Times, told Editor & Publisher that “the idea of the pact is not something we had reported and not something we have found.” The new element, he said, “took an already unusual story and turned it into something operatic.”Time magazine updated their original story.(Also from New York Times article.)
Update, 6:15 p.m. Time magazine’s reporter, Kathleen Kingsbury, published an update to her story today. She includes the original quotes from the principal, who unequivocally said, “They made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together.” And she concludes with this thought:--------
So did the girls make a formal pact to get pregnant together or not? Without comment from any of the pregnant students themselves, it may be impossible to determine exactly what they agreed to, and when. So far, the only school official to use the word “pact” is Sullivan, who reportedly now says he does not recall who told him about the pact in the first place. But what does seem clear based on TIME’s reporting is that some of the girls in question did at least discuss the idea of getting pregnant at the same time, and that too little was done to educate the girls on the potential ramifications of that choice.
TT - The original Time magazine story was less about a so-called "pregnancy pact" than about access to birth control.
But by May, after nurse practitioner Kim Daly had administered some 150 pregnancy tests at Gloucester High's student clinic, she and the clinic's medical director, Dr. Brian Orr, a local pediatrician, began to advocate prescribing contraceptives regardless of parental consent, a practice at about 15 public high schools in Massachusetts.The Time article said, "but the notion of a school handing out birth control pills has met with hostility." Says Mayor Carolyn Kirk: "Dr. Orr and Ms. Daly have no right to decide this for our children." The pair resigned "in protest" on May 30. The "controversy" divided "this fiercely Catholic enclave."
TT - The pregnancy tests were, apparently, given repeatedly to the same seven or eight girls.
June 25 - Jill Stanek at WorldNet Daily makes the point that that Principal Joseph Sullivan, the supposed source of the quote in Time magazine article, didn't inform the Massachusetts Department of Social Services of a case of suspected sex abuse. And the nurse didn't either.
