Help Availabe To Young Teenage Pregnant Girls example essay topic

Today's society offers medical, educational and childcare aid to young teenage girls who are pregnant. Theses support systems make having a baby at a young age more socially acceptable and make it easier to for young teenage Moms to take care of their babies. The year was 1980. All the trees had lost the last of their leaves and it was cold late fall day when I walked into my high school; Tri-West and the whispers were flying through the air.

When I reached my group of friends, they were quick to tell me what was going on. One of our classmates was pregnant and the students, teachers, and myself were in shock to hear who it was. Her name was Debbie Douglas. She was a quiet girl, made strait A's, and was on the student council. I remember students saying that she had been raped.

Teachers said that she was going to probably have an abortion. Debbie was the first girl in our school who became pregnant or at least the first girl who became pregnant and everyone knew about it. The students, teachers and her friends treated her like she had a horrible, contagious disease. At first, Debbie and her boyfriend Mike were not allowed to attend school. Later they were allowed to attend half days, but not allowed to be near each other in school. Students were instructed by the teachers not to talk to Debbie about her condition.

Mike was not allowed to play sports, and Debbie had to give up playing the clarinet in the band. Even though the teachers and students did not approve of what had happened, after a few months passed the students, teachers and Debbie and Mike's close friends started talking more to Debbie and Mike and stop treating Debbie like she had a horrible, contagious disease. Later in the summer of 1981, after the school year ended, Debbie gave birth to her baby. Debbie did not return to Tri-West her senior year. It was as if she disappeared. I remember feeling sorry for Debbie and thinking about how much having a baby must have changed her life and how was she going to get a job without a high school diploma.

The following year of school the teachers did not talk about what had happened to Debbie and Mike and it was as if the teachers expected that everyone had learned from Debbie and Mike's "mistake" and no one else would get pregnant and disgrace Tri-West ever again. At that time I would have never thought that two years later I would be pregant n, but two years later I was just that, pregnant. It was during September of my senior year in high school when I found out that I would be having a baby of my own. My best friend Andrea accompanied me to the Planned Parenthood clinic where the nurses confirmed that I was pregnant.

They instructed me to tell my parents, and to set up prenatal care from my family doctor. Remembering how everyone reacted when they found out about Debbie Douglas becoming pregnant frightened me enough to decide that no one except Andrea and my boyfriend would know about my pregnancy until I was unable to hide it anymore. As my stomach grew, I wore baggy clothes and avoided my parents as much as possible. Due to small size of my stomach, I was able to keep my pregnancy a secret until the day I gave birth to my baby. After giving birth, my step = dad did not allow me to return home and my boyfriend decided that he was not ready to be a Father and wanted nothing to do with me or our child. I struggled through finding a place to live, and worked to make enough money to pay bills, pay a baby sitter, and take care of my baby's physical and medical needs.

The only help I had was from Women, Infants and Children which offered me vouchers for certain food products. Also, I was on the food stamp program. I quickly found that trying to raise a child on my own was very difficult, but I was determined. After 17 years passed, my second child, Heather was a junior in high school. She came home one day from shool, was very upset, and went straight to her bedroom. I gave her a could of minutes, and then I entered her room.

She was crying. I sat down on her bed with her. She grabbed me and began to sob, saying that she could not believe it. I still did not know what she was talking about, and I began to think that she was going to announce that she was pregnant!

I sat with her trying not to panic or react. She looked up at me and stated ther her best fiend Kelly was pregnant. I sighed with relief, but I was shocked. Kelly was not the first girl to get pregnant at this high school, but she was Heather's best friend and I would support Kelly any way that I could. I did not know about all of the help availabe to young teenage pregnant girls, but I was about to learn. It has been 23 years since the year that Debbie Douglas became known as the first girl to get pregnant at Tri-West and 21 years since I became a teenage statistic.

It makes me sad and angry when I see teenage girls pregnant or see them with their own baby. In today's society sex is openly discussed in shool, on television, and within families. Teenagers have easy access to many different forms of birth control and some birth control is free, yet it seems as though there are as many, if not more teenage girls getting pregnant. Today's society makes it easier for teenagers to throw caution to the wind, by offering pregnant teenagers free medical care during the pregnancy, free medical care for the baby, free formula and food during the pregnancy and after the baby is born for up to 3 years after the baby is born. Also, during pregnancy teenage girls are allowed to attend an alterative school so that they are not uncomfortable. After the baby is born, teenage girls can opt to finish high school at the alternative shool or return to high school.

After graduating from high school, state and federal government offers young moms free college money and free child care while they work or attend shool. I can se why some teenage girls could believe that getting pregnant would be an easy way to have their college paid for. Especially teenage girls whose families may not be able to afford to pay for college. Today's society needs to take a long hard look at teenage pregnancy and come up with a way to meet their needs without ridiculing them as Debbie and Mike were, but once they have used the free help and no longer need it they should be required to give back by paying a small portion of their income over a set period of time to the agencies that offered the free services.