Lifetime movie fails to address boys’ responsibilities in teen pregnancy ** Two Stars

By Gabrielle Pantera

Camryn Manheim in The Pregnancy Pact

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 1/23/2010 – “Almost one in three girls become pregnant before they’re twenty,” says Cameron Manheim. “One in six girls in the U.S. will become teen mothers.”

The Lifetime TV movie The Pregnancy Pact is inspired by a true story. Time Magazine created a media frenzy when it reported that the rise in the number of pregnancies at a high school was the result of a “pregnancy pact”, that unmarried teenage girls were trying to get pregnant.

Thora Birch stars at Sidney Bloom, an on-line journalist who returns to her hometown to investigate the sudden spike in teenage pregnancies at her old high school. The teen pregnancies in this small town rise to 18. Lorraine Dougan stars as Nancy Travis, the head of a local “conservative values” group and mother to one of the girls who’s under 16 and pregnant.

Camryn Manheim, as school nurse Kim Daly, tries to convince the school that it would be a good thing to provide contraception for students. She believes making condoms available will stop the rise in pregnancies. Will she succeed in making family planning an open discussion with teens or will the school board and parents prevail in continuing a “don’t kiss, and if you do, don’t tell” policy?

The Pregnancy Pact portrays a pregnant teen smoking and drinking alcohol. It’s very disappointing that Lifetime TV has permitted this. Somebody made a very poor decision. Here’s a movie, promoted as being a healthy message to teens, that’s promoting tobacco and alcohol. And, it doesn’t do a good job addressing teen pregnancy either.

The message of the movie is if girls were provided with better access to condoms, there’d be less teen pregnancy. While that may be generally true, this is a movie about girls who are trying to get pregnant! Why would they want condoms? The movie does not offer the obvious answer of giving high school boys condoms, or engaging boys in the responsibility of their decisions. Why is that?

Making a baby takes two people. This story one-sidedly lays the blame all on the girls. What is the guy’s side of the story? Are there any repercussions for the boys for what they’ve done? In the movie, not one boy stands by the girl he got pregnant. What sort of message is this?

The message of this movie is wrong on so many levels. Note that this is a movie that was “inspired” by a true story, that it isn’t actually based on the truth. It would be better if Lifetime did a reality series showing what really happens to teens who become pregnant.

Lifetime has partnered with The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and will offer the movie free of charge to educators and non-profit groups after January 24th. Like the movie suggests, just say no.

Lifetime premieres The Pregnancy Pact on January 23 at 9pm PT/ET.

http://www.mylifetime.com/movies/the-pregnancy-pact