Teen Pregnancy

I've had this article saved since April because I wanted to write about it. A teenage girl faked being pregnant for her Senior school project. If you haven't read it, go ahead. I'll wait...

Oh alright, I'm going to summarize it a bit anyway... So she literally only told her mother, the principal (who had to get the approval of the superintendent as well), her best friend (who could apparently keep a secret!), one of her seven siblings, and her boyfriend of 3 years. Even his parents didn't know the truth!

She wore a prosthetic belly for months, telling everyone she was due in July. Finally, she stood (in all her pregnant glory) in front of the student body to give a presentation on Stereotypes, rumors, and statistics.

She had several members of the audience read statements during the presentation. They were all things that had been said about her behind her back. All of them had, obviously, made it back to her. I'm sure her presentation showed a much more realistic view of the pregnant teenager than that show on MTV ever could would.

Anti-teenage pregnancy II
Photo Credit

Her story is amazing, but I'm sharing it for another reason. I was 16 and Pregnant. I've been through the real deal. In fact, I also attended a very small country school at the time. I don't recall exactly, but there were less than 100 people in each graduating class there back then.

I had complete strangers walk up to me, ask if I was "that pregnant girl" and place their hand on my belly. Rude much? I was allowed to wear sweat pants to school even though it was against the dress code. I had my car egged. I had derogatory statements said to and yelled at me.

Even then, in my Junior year of high school, I did not consider myself a religious person. The only "community" at school that felt accepting, though, were the Christians. I started going to the little meetings where they would mostly speak against abortion. It was as if I was their new class pet. At least they weren't saying nasty things to me, though, right? Never mind that I really did look into abortion first.

Teenagers (and 1 adult) pregnant... with balloons.
Photo Credit

What is even crazier, I set a new trend! Shortly after I got pregnant, other girls in my school started popping up pregnant. I'm pretty certain they weren't treated with the same negativity that I received. I was never popular, though, and hadn't even been at the school for an entire year by this point.

My Graduation Ceremony for G.E.D.

Eventually I got far enough along that I was set up to finish my year from home. My favorite teacher agreed to bring my work and watch over my testing. In Spring of what would have been my Senior year (I never returned to school), I got my G.E.D. (General Equivalency Degree / Diploma).

To find out what happened with that child o' mine, check out my guest post today at A Little Bit of All of It!