90 Pregnancies At One Memphis High School

Bonny Kinney
11:23 a.m. CST, January 13, 2011

Memphis 1/13/2011) About 90 students at a Memphis High School are either pregnant, or have been recently.

The startling news was confirmed by a high ranking city official and comes as the community plans to roll out a new initiative to help combat the problem.

However, one Frayser High School graduate says teen pregnancy is not a new problem for the school.

When we would come back from summer break, there would be a thousand people pregnant. We were like, what's going on?" joked Alicia Williamson, who graduated from Frayser in 2004.

"There were a whole lot of bellies. You had to watch out so you didn't bump into them. Being 2011, I thought a lot of them would have thought this is not the right way to go, having babies during school time," she added.

The organization, Girls, Inc. teaches girls about preventing pregnancy.

Deborah Hester Harrison, who heads the organization, says Memphis' teen pregnancy rate stands at between 15 and 20 percent, almost twice the national average.

In the Frayser zip code, the rate is about 26 percent. Harrison partly blames the media.

"So much of our society is sexually oriented. As adults we can look at that and it doesn't impact us, but kids are different," Harrison said.

It's why Girls, Inc. offers classes where teenage girls "care for" computerized babies to give them a feel for what teenage parenthood is like.

The organization will also be part of a new initiative tentatively scheduled to be introduced next week.

Doesn't sound too enticing. Lots of foolish kids not being careful or prepared.
With 11070 students spread out over 35 Memphis high schools I don't see how they get a percentage of 15 to 20 percent unless maybe they are only counting female population. Which would make sense. There is probably an additional large percentage of junior high and middle school pregnancies as well.

A number of Hudson Valley schools use the computerized babies in the Health Classes. Oddly enough, some of my students had confessed that they rather enjoyed the experience of "caring" for those doll babies, and look forward to the day they are parents. Even sooner rather than later. Or, so they say.
Kids get stranger every year.

If toddler time lack of sleep doesn't dissuade them, they should try dealing with thier own peers for a week of pretend parenting.

I agree...and, think the subject heading should read, "Guys, aren't you glad you didn't attend this high school?"

One of my motivations for posting this is my recollection of high school time, in a prior geological period. No one, as far as I knew, got pregnant -- and we had a highly numerous student body. Lads' tales of sexual success were dismissed as boastful bullshit. So I believe the vast majority of us, male and female, graduated as virgins.
The above high school presents a target-rich environment inconceivable to us way back when. Maybe, as AOR suggested, we were better off as we were.

Sounds to me like that schools in the ghetto, where metal detectors are not a new thing and either is teen pregnancy.
Memphis has some really rough areas and has led the country in murder rates often if i remember correctly.
To myself the high pregnancy rate in that school doesnt seem to infer fun and party but rather dangerous and failing.

To myself the high pregnancy rate in that school doesnt seem to infer fun

So the guys who did the deed were just performing a grim task? Or am I assuming incorrectly that these guys are fellow pupils from the same school?

Even today, many suburban schools that boast low pregnancy rates can do so only because the young mother to be and her family have been convinced that the local BOCES young mother's program would better serve both the young mother and the baby. Not having a pregnant teen wandering the hallways or sitting next to you in physics class goes a long way to making it look as if teen pregnancy is a non-issue.

By the time I gradutated HS in '72 we "lost" three young mothers to pregnancy out of a grad class of less than 350. All three dropped out of school. That number would have been much higher if not for the growing popularity and use of the "pill". Young women/men in more disadvangtaged communities, have fewer resources for proper and reasonable birth control or abortion.

Then as now, there were also those young women who just wanted to get preggers. Then as now, there were/are young men who just don't give a sh....t about birth control and fathering a child.

Sadly, for a myriad of reasons, teen pregnancy will continue to be a societal problem.

I believe that were it not for the sanity of most of the high school female population we might all have been fathers at way too early an age. That and the fact that most of us were also less than perfect male specimens.
Perhaps the paradigm shift is mostly in how the females view teenage pregnancy.

The issue of 90 teen pregnancies made the broadcast news last evening. Apparently, only about two dozen of these pregnancies are "local" girls. The school in question has a large young mother's program that receives pregnant students from other high schools in the county system, thus inflating the numbers enough to attract the attention of the media and others.

Equally startling was the mention by the broadcast panelists that the Memphis metro area has one of, if not, the highest infant mortality rates in the nation!