By Francesca Donlan
News-Press.Com, Ft. Myers, September 2, 2008

Debbie Webb worried all weekend after learning the teen daughter of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is pregnant.

“I just think it glamorizes teen pregnancy,” said Webb, executive director of PACE Center for Girls in Fort Myers. Webb runs a school for at-risk girls between 12 and 18, some of whom are mothers.

“They are going to get married and everything is going to be hunky-dory,” Webb said.

Bristol Palin, 17, plans to marry the father of her child. The pregnancy was unplanned.

The scenario plays too nice and neat, Webb said.

“Teenage pregnancy is not glamorous,” she said.

Teen pregnancy has been a hot media topic. Teen celebrity Jamie Lynn Spears made headlines earlier this year for her unplanned pregnancy at 16. Popular movie “Juno” features a pregnant teen; NBC’s “The Baby Borrowers” shows teens responsible for bringing up babies.

News about Palin’s pregnancy has pushed the topic into overdrive. For the first time since 1991, teen pregnancy rates increased across the country in 2006, the latest figures available, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Webb doesn’t want that number to continue to climb.

More teen mothers mean fewer young women graduating from high school and more living in poverty, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

“It’s way too early to know if this is the start of a new trend,” Stephanie Ventura, the CDC’s head of the Reproductive Statistics, said in a statement.

What is known, Webb said, is that education helps prevent teen pregnancy. The PACE center offers sex education and makes students take home a baby doll programmed to respond like a real baby.

After a weekend with a pretend baby, the students come back to school exhausted.

“They didn’t know real babies cried that much,” Webb said. “They were lost about what the baby needed.”

Mary Ellen Miller, nursing director at the Lee County Health Department, isn’t sure why teen pregnancies are climbing. Two years ago, she lost funding for her teenage prevention program coordinator.

“Obviously teens are making decisions not to abstain and not to use birth control,” Miller said.

“Is it because they are unaware of the availability of birth control? Is it because there has been such a focus on abstinence-only education and not enough information about postponing or protecting against pregnancy?

“I don’t know, but it’s something to think about.”

Miller does know that parents have to take the lead on sex education.

“When you survey kids, they will say their parents are the primary source of information about sex and sexual topics,” she said. “Parents don’t know that.”

Kathy Miller, executive director at Lifeline Family Center Inc. in Cape Coral, provides care for a dozen teen mothers.

Miller heard people blaming Sarah Palin for her daughter’s pregnancy. But she disagrees.

“Society is making it harder and harder on good parents to reinforce good values to their kids,” she said.

She blames society’s obsession with sexuality for cranking up the pressure on young women.

“We need to wake up,” Miller said. “We need to see what we can do about selling everything based on sexuality from gum to toothpaste. If you’re not a sex symbol, you’re nothing and that’s a shame. I’d like to put the spotlight on their character, their hearts and their minds.”

She invites any teenager who glamorizes teen pregnancy to visit her center.

“Come talk to my girls about a baby cutting teeth and crying at 3 a.m. and they have a test the next day and can’t get any sleep,” she said.

“There’s nothing sexy or glamorous about that. There’s very little time left for you at all.”