Published: September 3, 2008
TAMPA - Alikeyda Heredia was a 16-year-old junior at Leto High School when she found out she was pregnant.
"I couldn't believe it," she said. "I was in denial for months."
Her
mother supported Heredia's decision to have her son and keep him.
Heredia also got involved with a local mentoring program that helped
her graduate.
Today she's an 18-year-old single mom with plans to
study physical therapy at Hillsborough Community College. Having the
support of her family and community was "huge," she said.
Teen
pregnancy, on the rise nationwide after a 15-year decline, is once
again in the national spotlight, after Republican vice presidential
hopeful Sarah Palin's revelation that her 17-year-old unmarried
daughter is 5 months pregnant.
Heredia and those who work with
teen moms say the interest generated by the announcement translates
into an opportunity for public education. State figures show that
almost 26,000 Florida teens gave birth in 2006, the most recent
statistics available.
"It's a good topic to talk about, and to
happen now was good timing," said Heredia, who counted 10 pregnant
students at her school the year she graduated.
It doesn't matter
if you're from a good family or you have the support of two parents
like Bristol Palin does, she said. "It shows that it happens to
everyone."
For Jane Murphy, executive director of the Healthy
Start Coalition of Hillsborough County, the news opens the door for
parents to talk with their children - daughters and sons - about sex and its consequences.
"There's no immunity," she said.
Florida
has the sixth highest rate of teen pregnancies in the nation, said
Adrienne Kimmell, executive director of the Florida Alliance of Planned
Parenthood Affiliates in Sarasota.
The reasons vary, she said,
from abstinence programs that overshadow prevention education,
including information about safe sex, to Florida not having any formal
standards for sex education.
But the outcome is clear, Kimmell said: "We're really failing our teens."
Figures
from the state Department of Health's Office of Vital Statistics show
there were 25,860 births by mothers 19 and younger in Florida in 2006,
an increase of almost 1,300 from the year before.
Hillsborough
County reported 2,078 births to teenagers that year; of those, 662 were
mothers age 15 to 17, and 30 were mothers 14 and younger. The total has
steadily increased since 2003, when there were 1,744 births to teen
mothers.
Funding cuts and shifts in focus have caused some
pregnancy prevention programs to fall by the wayside, said Slake
Counts, a project manager for The Children's Board of Hillsborough
County. The government-funded agency provides research and grants for
children's studies and programs.
The board changed its focus
several years ago, concentrating less on pregnancy prevention and more
on issues that affect children from birth to age 8.
"That left us
with services after the fact," Counts said. "We knew when we took away
prevention programs, the rates would go up."
Woman to Woman is
one of those programs that helps pregnant teens up to age 18 finish
their education and keep from getting pregnant again while they're in
school. Sponsored by Gulf Coast Community Care, Ounce of Prevention and
The Children's Board, it pairs the moms with female volunteers who
become life coaches for a year.
For Heredia, it was added support
to succeed. Monthly workshops taught her about parenting, anger
management, healthy relationships and goal setting among other skills.
"It kept me focused," said the teen, whose son, Marcelo, is 16 months
old now.
For 18-year-old Ada Adorno, Woman to Woman bolstered her
self-confidence. Pregnant at 15, she was a foster child without any
direction in life.
"I got to know more about myself," Adorno
said. "I learned why things were happening and who I was. I asked
myself, 'What do I want to become as a mother?' I don't want my kids to
go through what I went through."
Adorno said she graduated from
Simmons Career Center in Plant City with a 3.47 grade-point average.
She has her own apartment now, where she lives with her 2-year-old son,
Christopher, and attends Hillsborough Community College.
In
Florida, only 30 percent of teen moms complete high school, said
program manager Iris Grimsley, who was once a teen mother at 19. Since
August 2004, about 70 teen moms have taken part in the program, and all
of them have graduated high school or received their GED, she said.
They
have babies because they're lonely or because they know they can get
financial help that will give them independence from their families,
Grimsley said.
Some see movies like "Juno," which featured a
pregnant student who gives up her baby for adoption, or they watch
reality television shows like the "Baby Borrowers," which lets teen
couples try on the role of teen parents, and they think having a baby
will be fun.
Or they read about Jamie Lynn Spears, Britney's baby
sister who got pregnant when she was 16, and think being a young mother
is glamorous.
"It's socially acceptable," Grimsley said. Every
now and then, one of the pregnant teens in her program will admit: "I'm
afraid to tell my parents."
"And I think 'Wow, that's so uncommon!" Grimsley said.
Having the issue discussed during the presidential election can only help further educate people about teen pregnancy, she said.
"I
think she's going to be able to relate to a lot of families," Grimsley
said of Sarah Palin. "It's life. We take it too seriously. As if
mistakes are never to be made. That's how we learn."
Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144 or sackerman@tampatrib.com
