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Having worked as director for a teen pregnancy program I must emphatically say that schools and other public organizations should distribute not only condoms but educational materials on sexual behavior, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). This especially holds true for organizations and schools in rural areas.

The program I was running had been, and to the best of my current knowledge still is, seeing an increase in the number of pregnant teens and teens with STIs. This program is located in a rural state currently undergoing a major economic boom. Many of these teen girls had already dropped out of school and had moved here with either their parents or the father of their baby. These factors, in my opinion, had much to do with our increase in pregnant teens. By the time we had reached the halfway point in our fiscal year I had seen more than 120 pregnant teens from throughout our county. Considering that the largest town in our county has just barely (if at all) reached the status of a small city, this is a large portion of our teen population that has become pregnant.

Teen pregnancy has become a status symbol in our area. I can't count the number of times I have heard a teen state disappointment when I told her she was not pregnant. I even had one teen go so far as to tell me I could expect her back next month because she wanted to be pregnant. Her friend who had two children as a teen tired to tell this young lady why she did not want to have children at her age but this young lady was determined. It was only through fast thinking that I was able to come up with a way of deterring this young lady from continuing her way of thinking. This was my solution, and it worked. I asked her friend to allow this teen to be mother to her children for one weekend. I told her fiend to be there in case of emergency or problems with the children but to allow her friend to perform all the routine tasks of being a mother, including taking care of the middle of the night feedings of her newborn.

A couple of weeks later I saw the two girls walk by my office to the lab. I became very nervous, thinking I might have alienated this girl and possibly her friend, and that they had bypassed my office for a pregnancy test. I walked into the lab waiting area and spoke with the friend. This young lady was happy to see me. She told me she was going to stop into my office when they were done at the lab. I asked her what they were doing at the clinic. She explained

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