WHEN a 15-year-old girl at Gloucester high school in Massachusetts discovered she was pregnant earlier this year, she displayed no trace of fear or concern. Shown the results of her pregnancy test, she responded: “Sweet!” She then rushed off to tell her friends.

The girl was among a group of up to 18 Gloucester teenagers who may have made an apparent “pregnancy pact” that has stunned this decaying fishing community and sparked a renewed national debate about sex education in American schools.

The notion that girls as young as 14 might deliberately try to become pregnant has embarrassed school and health officials. It has also ignited a row about what exactly the girls were up to, and to what extent the religious beliefs of this predominantly white and Catholic corner of New England may have encouraged an unprecedented spike in teenage sexual activity.

In Gloucester last week, there was both shame and scorn as officials questioned the nature of the “pact” and teenagers shrugged their shoulders at a scandal that many seemed to view as the inevitable consequence of growing up bored.

“When you live in Gloucester, there’s nothing else to do but have babies,” sighed Josua Medeiros, 17, as he lounged on a bench near a town beach. But Alycia Mazzeo, who became pregnant at 14 and now has a seven-month-old daughter to look after, said she wished she had a chance to lecture her schoolmates about the realities of teenage motherhood. “It’s not all cute things like dressing up your baby,” she said.

As the home port of the Atlantic fishing crew that perished in the so-called “perfect storm” - a story that was turned into a best-selling book and a Hollywood film - Gloucester is used to national attention.

Yet the media storm that erupted last week sent towns-people scurrying for cover. “I’m sorry, we’re under a gag order,” said a teacher as she left the school.

Christopher Farmer, the British-born superintendent of local schools, found himself under siege as reporters around the world attempted to link events in Gloucester to the recent Hollywood vogue for cheery films about unplanned pregnancy.

Films such as Juno and Knocked Up have been blamed for romanticising a social evil, as has massive media coverage of Britney Spears and her family. Spears’s actress sister, Jamie Lynn, gave birth last week after becoming pregnant at 16.

Yet Farmer and other local officials are not so sure they have found the cause of the pregnancy surge. School officials confirmed last week that 18 students had become pregnant in the past 12 months, compared with an annual average of three or four.

The initial report of a pregnancy pact was based on supposed remarks to Time magazine by the school’s headmaster, Joseph Sullivan, who was on holiday last week.

Nobody disputes Sullivan’s contention that several girls were trying to get pregnant, but he did not specifically mention a pact and for all the media attention lavished on Gloucester last week, nobody was able to produce a girl who could testify to its existence.

“I had never heard the term ‘pact’ until Time magazine wrote it,” said Farmer.

One mother who claimed to know some of the girls said she doubted there was a pact to become pregnant, but some of the girls may have vowed to stick by each other while raising their babies.

Others suggested the girls were simply angry with the lack of attention they received from their parents and wanted to stir up trouble.

Whatever the truth of the girls’ intentions, Gloucester is still stuck with a baby boom it can ill afford. The school has child-care facilities for up to seven mothers. It is already full for next year.

The town also faces a difficult debate about how to improve its sex education and whether to provide free contraception in schools, which is fiercely opposed by many Catholics.

Most worrying for other parents across the country is the mounting evidence that after 15 years of declining national teen pregnancy rates, the problem is returning. A recently released government study found that the number of teenagers who said they had used a condom the last time they had sex dropped from 63% in 2005 to 61% last year.

Additional reporting: Beverly Ford

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