Readers Fired Up By Teen-Pregnancy Issue | Newsweek Culture

FERTILITY
Why I Froze My Eggs
5/2/2009 12:00:00 AM
I had just turned 35 when I started thinking about freezing my eggs. I'd always thought I'd have a husband and a kid or two by 35—that's the ominous year when doctors start stamping women's medical charts with the words "advanced maternal age" if they are pregnant, and some warn that fertility starts to drop off a cliff if they are not. But instead I was single, with an adventurous career, and concerned about my eggs. So in 2005, when I heard about a free seminar offered by a company called Extend Fertility, I thought this was exactly what I needed: a way to safeguard my eggs so I can relax until I meet Mr. Right. Extend had just begun marketing egg freezing as the newest choice among women's options: preserve your fertility and wait to have a child.
HEALTH
A Vast and Sudden Sadness
Claudia Kalb 1/31/2009 12:00:00 AM
Marirosa Anderson was still sweating from a workout when her cell phone rang at 8:20 p.m. on Nov. 11, a particularly cold night in northern Virginia. Anderson had planned to spend the evening with her husband and two small children. Then she saw the caller-ID number. She took a deep breath, readied herself and answered the phone. Karen Harvey, a labor-and-delivery nurse at Inova Fairfax Hospital, gave her the rundown. A baby was about to be delivered by C-section and the parents wanted photographs. Could she come right over?
SOCIETY
Teen Pregnancy, Hollywood Style
Sarah Kliff 7/23/2008 12:00:00 AM
It could have been Immaculate Conception. In the premiere episode of the new drama "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," 15-year-old Amy comes home from band practice and is shocked--the pregnancy test is positive! That two-second tryst at band camp, as she describes it to her friends, "was definitely not like what you see in the movies." They share the same confusion: how did a good girl end up in this situation? The obvious answer (Amy had unprotected sex) never quite surfaces; it's brushed off in a whirlwind of mystification. By the end of the episode, band-camp guy has taken a backseat to Amy's new love interest. As the plot pushes forward, it never once looks back at whether Amy considered contraceptives or talked to her parents about condoms. Amy is pregnant, and that is where this story starts.
TEEN PREGNANCY
Baby 101
Sarah Kliff 7/12/2008 12:00:00 AM
When OK! Magazine announced 16-year-old Nickelodeon star Jamie Lynn Spears' pregnancy in December 2007, it was the best-selling issue since the magazine's American debut in 2005. "We knew it was a very big story, but it took us a little bit by surprise just how big the story became," says Rob Shuter, OK!'s executive editor. "The nightly news was talking about it."
CULTURE
Nickelodeon’s Dilemma
Matthew Philips 12/20/2007 12:00:00 AM
It was a tale made in tabloid heaven: Britney Spears's kid sister, star of the cable TV tween hit "Zoey 101," was pregnant at the age of 16! She was paid to tell the world in OK! Magazine. And her mom's book on parenting was suddenly delayed! While the tabs and the celebrity blogs gave thanks to the news gods, the story had a rather different impact in the executive suites at Viacom's Nickelodeon, which airs Jamie Lynn Spears's wildly popular show. After all, the star's pregnancy wasn't exactly in keeping with the program's squeaky-clean high-school fare. Would the suits try to spin her situation into a plot line? Fire her? Or hunker down and try to ride out the storm?
Thanks, Jamie Lynn
Kathleen Deveny 12/19/2007 12:00:00 AM
When I saw the New York Post on my breakfast table this morning, I practically threw my body on top of it. There, across from my sleepy seven-year-old daughter, was a smiling picture of her favorite TV actress, Jamie Lynn Spears, star of "Zoey 101." On the show, Jamie Lynn is a spunky student at the beautiful Pacific Coast Academy, a boarding school where drugs don't exist and kids do their homework without ever being asked. In real life, Jamie Lynn is 16 years old and three months pregnant.