Gloucester, MASSACHUSETTS

The "Pregnancy Pact" Principal resigned in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

August 13, 2008 - The Gloucester High School Principal who was the source of a Time magazine that claimed that the multiple pregnancies of teenage girls at the school were the result of deliberate and intentional "pact" has resigned.

He cited lack of support by the Mayor and the School Superintendent for his decision.
---------------------
Previous coverage here.

Short version: Time magazine was there to support the position that schools should prescribe contraceptives regardless of parental consent. It was a policy advocated by the school clinic's medical director and nurse practioner. The practioner and the pediatrician who was the school medical director both resigned in May in protest when the notion was "met with hostility." (Says Mayor Carolyn Kirk: "Dr. Orr and Ms. Daly have no right to decide this for our children.")

The school nurse practitioner performed 150 pregnancy tests, apparently on the same seven or eight girls. Seventeen girls in the High School became pregnant. The school principal stands by his contention that the students formed a pact to become pregnant.

Utterly ignored by the media is the fact that no parents were alerted to the promiscuous behavior and no educational programs - it's a school, for God's sake - were adopted to stem the soaring unwed teenage pregnancy rate. What are schools for if not to educate trashy students on acceptable behavior? Excuse me, but when a pediatrician wants a school to prescribe birth control pills without parental consent, what do you think students think the school attitude is?

What use are schools who do not teach even basic decency? Come to think of it, what good are newspapers and a media that thinks that this is just a sensational story?