New blog category: introducing “Book & Media Reviews”, for the many times abortion and unplanned pregnancy appear in film, TV, movies, and books! Behold your first: The Pregnancy Project: A Memoir
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Gaby Rodriguez (right) posing with actress who plays her on film.
Despite being a low-income Latina and daughter of a teenaged single Mom, Gaby Rodriguez exceeded many people’s expectations. An honor-roll student on countless school committees, squad captain, member of the leadership team, and already recommended by several teachers to the college of her choice, Gaby was a top contender on nearly everyone’s “sure to excel” list… Until her senior year, when she announced to her school and family that she was pregnant. While some, like her leadership class teacher, said encouraging things like “Well, I don’t see why you can’t be a leader and a mom”, most reactions from peers, teachers and family were cold and cruel:
“I always knew she’d get pregnant. All the girls from her neighborhood do.”
“She’s so stupid. She just threw her life away.”
“She’ll never go to college now.”
“I wonder if she’ll even graduate.”
“Her boyfriend’s going to bail.”
“She had a real chance at a future and now she’ll never amount to anything. Her life is over.”
As Gaby walked the halls of her school that year, she and her closest confidantes kept track of comments that were said to and about her. She and her boyfriend Jorge bore a full barrage of negative expectations, and she witnessed how fast those around her began to look down and devalue her potential once her belly began to grow. She wanted desperately to show them all that she was still the same intelligent and potential-filled young lady she had been before she became pregnant – and in fact she was…
… Because Gaby wasn’t pregnant.
Gaby Rodriguez, now the author of a book entitled The Pregnancy Project: A Memoir
Why do we not come alongside a pregnant young lady and tell her “it won’t be easy but it can be done – and we can help?” On page 111 of her book, Gaby highlights the example of the four-minute mile. Prior to 1954 doctors and scientists said it was physically impossible for a human body to run a mile in under four minutes. No one had ever done it and it was believed one would die in the attempt. But just as soon as one man did it, he was quickly followed by another runner after another, and by 1957 sixteen runners had beaten the four minute mile. It seemed that once they knew it could be done, it entered their realm of possibility. The human mind is susceptible to that kind of conditioning – so why is society so quick to restrict the vision of possibility for young teens by telling them they are bound to have miserable lives if they have a baby?
I’ll let Gaby share her thoughts on the matter in this brief excerpt: (The Pregnancy Project, page 124-127)
The thing is, I understand where the negativity comes from. People say these things because they’ve seen other other young, unmarried parents mess up their lives. It would be unrealistic to expect everyone to say “Congratulations!” and cheer about it — and that would probably be harmful to others, because other teens might see the positive attention and want some of it for themselves… leading to more teen pregnancies.
No matter what, I knew that the focus had to stay on avoiding teen pregnancies in the first place. But once the act is done, why throw teen parents under the bus? Whether a committed couple’s birth control failed or someone got drunk at a party and had a one-night stand, the result is the same: There’s going to be a baby. What good does it do anyone to sit around insulting the parents? What positive result can possibly come of it?
If anything, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Teen moms don’t usually stop at one child. You’d think that they’d have hard lives and never want to get into that predicament again, but it often doesn’t happen that way. One in four teen moms gets pregnant again within two years. They wind up having second and third kids without being in solid marriages, but why? Maybe it’s because they’ve been told they’re screwups and that their own lives are over now anyway, so they figure this is all they can do in life. Maybe they become desperate for affection because they’ve been so ostracized. I can’t be sure what goes on in everyone’s minds, but can make guesses based on how I felt during the experiment.
… A message board post from a teen mom echoed what I was feeling. “When you get pregnant as a teenager, a lot of people give up on you and treat you like garbage, no matter how smart or nice or hard-working you were before,” she wrote. “Nobody wants to ‘encourage teen pregnancy’, so they feel it’s their duty to make you suffer. It is painful and scarring and it’s why a lot of teen moms drop out.”
I believe that once the news is announced, the focus needs to be on what now? For the benefit of society, it’s in everyone’s interest to make sure this baby doesn’t grow up to become a criminal, or a lifelong welfare recipient. Its entirely possible for the children of teen moms to do great things — you don’t need to look any further than President Barack Obama for proof of that. His mom was eighteen when she had him. Or Eric Clapton, Oprah Winfrey, even Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez — all were reared by teen moms, and no matter what you think of them, they’re all hugely successful in their fields.
So why not focus on that? Why not see President Obama’s mom as the four-minute mile of teen pregnancy? If she was able to finish her education, attain a successful life, and have one of her children grow up to become president of the United States, then we know it’s possible. With enough support and encouragement, maybe the teen dads would stick around, and maybe the teen moms would finish their education, get better jobs, and stop repeating the cycle.
We won’t win this battle by finger-pointing and gossiping. We win it by educating, talking, and lifting each other up. We win it by being decent to one another.
I think Gaby Rodriguez is quite right. She identifies in her book as being “very much pro-life” (page 89) and while she doesn’t say so explicitly, it’s not hard to see why many teens and young single women succumb to abortion precisely because they are so terrified by the refrain of “it’ll ruin your life!”. Women deserve better than that. If we truly care for their well-being and that of their children, our focus needs to be on offering women real support and real choices. Having a child will change a woman’s life (and that of her partner) especially if she chooses to raise the baby herself, but it doesn’t have to end or destroy it. It’s up to all of us to give her the encouragement and support she needs to not end her child’s life. She shouldn’t have to do it alone.
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People seem to not know that women don’t get pregnant on their own. They never say these negative things to the young men who played their part in it.
And how could anyone think that someone’s life is over if they have a child? Is it not part of a new beginning?
Im doing an annotated bibliography on this situation i find it very interesting how so many people think when they see a pregnant teenager. It doesn’t make sense how they think like that.