A Memphis high school is scrambling to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies after 90 of its students were pregnant sometime this school year. The staggering number of pregnant girls at Frayser High amounted to nearly 11 percent of the school's approximately 800 students. The news, is just that adults are starting to catch on to the problem, Alicia Williamson, a 2004 graduate said.
"When we would come back from summer break, there would be a thousand people pregnant," she said. "We were like what's going on. There were a whole lot of bellies." While the numbers at Frayser High were staggering, they weren't that far out of the ordinary for Memphis, where the teen pregnancy rate is between 15 and 25 percent. Frayser High School is a title one school, where 95 percent of students are eligible for free lunches and more than 100 students drop out between 11th and 12th grade, according to Public School Review.com.
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But whether it's socio-economic factors or just plain bad luck, Frayser High School seems to have caught national attention for its huge pregnancy rate. Critics like Memphis' Girls Inc. executive director Deborah Hester Harrison places some of the blame for the rapidly growing number of baby bumps on the media, and shows like MTV's "Teen Mom". "So much of our society is sexually oriented," she said.
In an effort to clamp down on the high pregnancy rate, local authorities are planning a massive teen pregnancy prevention campaign which will include an advertising campaign targeted at the community and after-school and in-school programs. The campaign will especially aim towards encouraging girls to say no -- or at least use protection if they are going to have sex.
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