Time Now Says Pregnancy Pact Really Anti-Abortion Pact

Much like a baby, it just won't shut up. The Gloucester pregnancy pact debate is as persistent as baby puke stains. Gloucester is clearly not Europe; it's apparent that pregnancies are on the rise there. But now Time has backed away from its pregnancy pact theory and is now suggesting that anti-abortion sentiment is the reason for the baby season. Nancy Gibbs writes:

I wonder if some soft message has taken hold when the data suggest that more women facing hard choices are deciding to carry the child to term. This has been the mission of the crisis-pregnancy-center movement, the more than 4,000 centers and hotlines and support groups around the country that aim to talk women out of having abortions and offer whatever support they can. If not in Hollywood, then certainly in Gloucester, teen parents and their babies face long odds against success in life. Surely they deserve more sympathy and support than shame and derision, if the trend that they reflect is not a typical teenager's inclination to have sex but rather a willingness to take responsibility for the consequences.

Feministing points out that Gibbs previously extolled crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) in Time. While pregnant women certainly need all the support they can get, CPCs are notorious for misleading women and providing false information, making them of dubious use to any pregnant teen weighing her options.

Gibbs acknowledges that the children of teen mothers "face long odds against success in life," yet somehow views bringing these children into the world as a "responsible" decision. She seems almost gleeful that teens are popping 'em out rather than popping birth control pills, completely ignoring both contraception and adoption in her article. Apparently the only option for horny teens is to suffer the consequences of their actions--by raising their babies to experience exactly the same kind of crappy life their parents had. Super!

So maybe there are more babies because there are fewer abortions--but is that necessarily a good thing? Abortion isn't exactly a walk in the park, but neither is, uh, raising a human being for 18 years. Gibbs' article does little except, as we pointed out before, continue to avoid making any sensible proposals for educating teens and preventing teen pregnancy--which would render the abortion debate null.

It is a little uncanny that all this is happening in the wake of Juno and Knocked Up, two hit movies that glossed over abortion (not to mention contraception) in favor of adoption and forcing oneself into an unhealthy relationship with a random pothead totally unprepared for fatherhood. Is Hollywood really influencing teens to carry to term? We hope not. Teens deserve accurate and complete information about their sexual and reproductive health, children deserve the chance for a better life than most teen parents can offer--and parents shouldn't let sex ed happen on screen.