The whole Massachusetts teen pregnancy "pact" story was just media hype, it appears. The circus started with a Time magazine article which quoted Gloucester High School principal Joseph Sullivan as saying that several girls at his institution have made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Time magazine’s reporter, Kathleen Kingsbury, updated the story and published original quotes from the principal's interview which show that indeed the Sullivan's words were not interpreted and he intended to say just that.

However, it appears that such a pact never existed and Sullivan, who is on vacation since last week, is the only one who claimed on the record to the contrary. The Times story was denied by both the girls at Gloucester High School, Mayor Carolyn Kirk of Gloucester and local press which followed the events long before Times interviewed Sullivan, to name just a few.

Carolyn Kirk said that the investigation triggered by the June 18 story in Times yielded no evidence of such a pact. The mayor scheduled a meeting with local officials in order to discuss the alarming rates of teenage pregnancies and start working on a strategy to significantly lower the numbers.

The girls are all 16 and younger and many believe that this is a direct result of the poor sexual education programs in schools, the movies presenting the pregnancy experience as beautiful and romantic, with no downsides and also the media with their massive constant coverage of celebrity pregnancies, all the press attention and discussions presenting it as ‘must-have’ experience.