17 teens pregnant after baby 'pact'

A GROUP of under-16s reportedly made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together - and now 17 students at their US school are mums-to-be.

Time magazine reported that 17 girls at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts are expecting babies "more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1200-student school had last year".

"Nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together," Joseph Sullivan, principal of the high school in the fishing and beach town told Time.

The father of one of the babies was a 24-year-old homeless man, Mr Sullivan told the weekly news magazine.

According to the Boston Globe newspaper, other men "involved in the pregnancies are in their mid-20s, a fact that prompted Mayor Carolyn Kirk of Gloucester to ask about statutory rape charges at last month's School Committee meeting".

None of the girls who made the alleged pregnancy pact or their parents agreed to speak with Time, which wrote that Gloucester High "has done perhaps too good a job of embracing young mothers," providing them with on-site childcare and healthcare facilities.