Eight girls from Gloucester High School in Gloucester, MA, have been the talk of the town. The principal of the school claims the girls—none older than 16—made a “pregnancy pact” with each other and planned to “get pregnant and raise their babies together.” The girls haven’t spoken to reporters, so the “pregnancy pact” may simply be an exaggeration. But what makes this story shocking is the fact that 9 other girls at Gloucester High have gotten pregnant—for a total of 17 teen pregnancies this year!

What’s going on in Gloucester that has girls lining up to get pregnant? Is it something in the water? Some people blame the media and think that all the attention pregnant celebrities get makes pregnancy seem glamorous. Others think that the girls just wanted someone to love them and thought that having a baby would fill their emotional needs.

It’s easy to point fingers, but where’s the good sex education and access to health services? Sex education at Gloucester High School ends freshman year. You can’t expect teens to avoid pregnancy by leaving them in the dark! Good sex ed wouldn’t just teach teens about the 9-month birth cycle, but it would also teach teens how to prevent pregnancy. Teens would learn about proper use of condoms and other birth control, and they would get all the facts about options if they do become pregnant.

Gloucester works hard to keep teen moms in school and offers free on-site day care. It’s great to see that pregnant teens are welcome, but what about preventing future teen pregnancies? In a school where day care is offered, why not offer condoms in the nurse’s office, too?

Getting pregnant isn’t a solution to poverty or lack of jobs and opportunities. And having a baby definitely isn’t the way to have someone to love and love you back. Pregnancy only makes life more difficult, especially for teens that have no education, job or people to help raise a child. Even though life can seem tough, having a baby is not the solution. It’s worth waiting until you’re older to get pregnant. You owe it to yourself AND the baby.

Think you can tell if someone has HIV? Posornot.com, a new Web site from mtvU, challenges you to tell whether or not someone is HIV positive just by looking at his or her picture.

You might think it’s easy to spot someone who’s HIV positive. You might use the way a person looks, his or her interests or even where a person lives as clues to his or her status. But in real life, it’s impossible to guess whether or not a person is HIV positive just by looking at him or her. There’s only one way to know if you or someone else is HIV positive or not—an HIV test.

HIV doesn’t discriminate, and anyone that has sex can be at risk of infection. People are often infected with HIV and don’t even realize it. That’s why it’s so important to talk to your partner about getting tested BEFORE having sex. And if you both decide to take the plunge and have sex, make sure to properly use condoms each and every time you have vaginal, anal or oral sex.

The best way to prevent the spread of HIV is to know your status and practice safer sex. Friday, June 27th is National HIV Testing Day. So find a low-cost clinic in your area and get tested.

If you’ve been to your local Kmart recently, you might have spotted the latest and greatest in girls’ fashion. Kmart is selling sweat pants that have the message “True Love Waits” written—of all places—across the backside.

If you’ve ever participated in an abstinence-only-until-marriage program, you’re probably familiar with the “true love waits” message. Abstinence-only-until-marriage programs urge teens to wait until they marry their “true love” to have sex. And while abstinence is the only 100-percent effective way to protect yourself from STDs and unplanned pregnancy, we’ve got a few questions for Kmart:

• So it’s not “true love” if you have sex before marriage?
• If you can’t legally get married because you’re gay, lesbian or bisexual, does that mean you should never have sex?
• Where are the “True Love Waits” pants for boys? Doesn’t the message apply to them, too?
• Why on earth would you have the message “True Love Waits” across your butt?!

Is Kmart trying to make abstinence-only sexy? Seems more like a mixed message to us.

It looks like a Utah sex ed teacher is in big trouble. Why? Because she answered some of her students’ questions about sex.

A group of about 50 parents are angry and claim that a health teacher at Fort Herriman Middle School in Herriman, Utah gave their children information about sex that wasn’t part of the curriculum. Now certain lawmakers want to make it a crime for teachers to stray from the state’s sex education laws.

The teacher is a sex ed veteran with over 30 years of teaching experience. She’s in trouble because she allegedly answered students’ questions on topics outside of the curriculum, including gay sex, oral sex and masturbation.

What’s the point of sex ed if we’re not educating teens? It’s time lawmakers wake up and realize that giving teens information is helpful, not harmful. Teens have real questions about sex, and leaving them in the dark is irresponsible. And although there are Web sites like Sexetc.org for teens to get answers to their sex questions, Web sites aren’t substitutes for good, in-class sex education.

Do you have questions about sex, love, relationships or other sex ed topics? Don’t be shy! Just Ask the Experts!

According to the modeling industry, the winner of America’s Next Top Model (ANTM) is (drumroll, please) “full-figured.”

Whitney Thompson, the twenty-year-old winner of ANTM, is 5 feet 10 inches tall and wears a size 10. In the real world, her size is completely healthy. But in the cutthroat world of modeling, she’s considered fat, full-figured or plus-sized.

The average American woman is 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 163 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That means average adult women might be size 12 to 14. Whitney Thompson wears a smaller size than the average woman, but she’s certainly bigger than runway models, who are estimated to be 5 feet 9 inches to 5 feet 11 inches tall and weigh 110 to 125 pounds. Which would you want to be—a healthy size 10 or borderline anorexic?

It’s great to see Whitney win ANTM. We’ll hopefully start to see more healthy, average-sized women modeling in the future. You go, girl!