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...this has changed. Today if a girl does not choose to abort her pregnancy (and some 45% of teenagers do), chances are she will keep the baby and raise it without the traditional blessings of marriage. "The shotgun marriage is a relic of the past," observes Mark Testa, of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. With teen marriages two to three times as likely to end in divorce, he explains, "parents figure, why compound their mistake?" In 1950 fewer than 15% of teen births were illegitimate. By 1983 more than half were, and in some regions of the country...
...their peers, it is important for kids to be sexually active. No one wants to be a virgin," observes Amy Williams, director of San Francisco's Teenage Pregnancy and Parenting Project (TAPP). The social pressure even on the youngest adolescents can be daunting. Says Stephanie, 14, of suburban Chicago, now the mother of a four-month-old, "Everyone is, like, 'Did you lose your virginity...
...what was happening to me." Unable to grasp their situation, adolescents frequently wait too long even to consider having an abortion. The gravity of such a decision often eludes them. "I was going to have an abortion, but I spent the money on clothes," confesses Sonya Lyde, 18, of Chicago, now the mother of a seven-month...
...prospect of motherhood. Such attitudes are especially prevalent among the poor. Take Zuleyma, 16, of Los Angeles, who gave birth last May: "I thought I might want to have a baby," she says. "I was thinking more in the future, but things happen." Or Derdra Jones of Chicago, who gave birth at 15: "Part of me wanted to get pregnant," she confesses. "I liked the boy a lot, and he used to say he wanted a baby." Or Marquel, 17, of Hawthorne, Calif.: "I had birth control pills in my drawer. I just didn't take them," she says...
...young girls trapped in poverty, life offers few opportunities apart from getting pregnant. High school may seem pointless. Even graduation is little guarantee of a job. Their lives are circumscribed in every sense. Says Social Worker Lisa Rost, who counsels such youngsters at Project Hope in Chicago: "Some of these kids have never seen Lake Michigan." Pregnancy becomes one of the few accessible means of fulfillment. "Nobody gets more attention than a little girl who's pregnant," observes Bishop Earl Paulk of Chapel Hill Harvester Church, a Protestant church in Atlanta that sponsors a program for pregnant teens. "It feels...