GLOUCESTER

A pact by a group of teenagers to get pregnant and raise their babies together is at least partly the reason for a sudden rise in pregnancies at a high school in Massachusetts.

Gloucester High School Principal Joseph Sullivan told Time magazine in a story published this week that the girls had confessed to making the pact after the school began investigating a rise in pregnancies that has left 17 girls at the school carrying a child. Normally, there are four pregnancies a year at the school.

Sullivan told Time nearly half of the expecting pupils, none older than 16, were involved. He said pupils were coming to the school clinic multiple times for pregnancy tests, and "seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were".

Some of the girls reacted to the news they were pregnant with high-fives and plans for baby showers, Sullivan said. One of the fathers was "a 24-year-old homeless guy", Sullivan told the magazine.

Superintendent Christopher Farmer confirmed the deal in a television interview, saying the girls had "an agreement to get pregnant".

Christen Callahan, a former Gloucester High School pupil who had a child when she was 15, said on NBC's Today show that some of the girls would ask her about her own pregnancy.

However, she said she had no first-hand knowledge of a pact by the girls to get pregnant. "They were just kind of like curious about it, they never actually came out and said it," Callahan said.

The first reports of the pupils' apparent plan to get pregnant were in the Gloucester Daily Times in March, when Sullivan said other students were reporting that the girls were getting pregnant on purpose.

The rash of pregnancies has shaken the seaside city about 30 miles north of Boston.-AP