In the late 90s, I was a young, single, pregnant high school dropout- long before MTV aired the controversial reality shows that Kelli Goff believes make young women want to get pregnant, back when the teen pregnancy rates spiked inexplicably before dropping to where they are now- the lowest rates ever. (That epidemic you keep hearing about? Nonexistent.) Many people, like Mayor Bloomberg, think they can tell you how my story would end- I would live in poverty, sad and alone, while my friends had limitless freedom and age-appropriate marriages and white picket fences. “He” would leave me, nobody with a lick of self-respect or a dime to his name would ever want me, and my baby would be crying on a billboard somewhere as a cautionary tale for other wanton young hussies who didn’t make chastity pledges. Eventually my child would grow up only to fail from a lifetime of neglect at the hands of an incapable child parent, and I would tear my hair out and curse the day I ruined my life by becoming an Unwed Teenage Mother.
They would be wrong.
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