by Sarah Vigue

Created on: June 24, 2008   Last Updated: June 27, 2008

Time magazine wrote an article on the 17 pregnant teenagers called, "Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High." Once the magazine hit the stands, every major radio and television station fanned the flames. Not only are 17 young women pregnant, but there was a pregnancy pact and one of the fathers is a 24 year old homeless man. The mayor is now disputing that there was ever any pregnancy agreement and states that Principal Sutherland cannot remember who told him that there was a pact. Thus, it is not a fact on which the public should rely. Is it possible, though, that a group of girls barely out of puberty and just entering high school felt that being pregnant among and with friends and raising sweet, little babies together would be a happy and supportive life experience?

Of course it makes sense on one level. Every one has a sob story whether it is from an unhealthy home life, depressed economy and how it affects individuals or the awkward and sometimes absolutely humiliating experience of going through hormonal changes during puberty. Life is not easy and certainly young people have made what we consider to be extreme choices for ages. Romeo and Juliet were how old when they fell madly in love and killed themselves? It doesn't matter, you get the point. Many social and biological factors can be to blame. These factors may not matter at all because these young women are old enough to give live and maybe should be held accountable for their actions instead of leaning on excuses.

With such a spike in teen pregnancy, however, it is virtually impossible to not delve into whether or not this pact truly existed, why it was made and how it happened. To anyone who moves to or lives on the North Shore of Massachusetts, the reputation of Gloucester is well known. It is considered a "weird" place to live. Being a historical and out of the way town with some locals that "never cross the bridge" to the mainland, Gloucester is the home to the Oldest Seaport that boasts a long line of fisherman immigrants that developed its economy fromyou guessed it: fishing. Historic districts are always touted for maintaining past ways of life, but with tradition comes a certain amount of reluctance to change.

Gloucester pedestrian and drivers traverse cracked roads with pot holes, past the seedy parts of town and see abandoned warehouses and old mills and the section of the island where people hang around for countless hours each day because the fishing economy is not at all what it used to be.

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