Film Analysis Essay- "The Pregnancy Pact"

Ariel Rivera

Leslie Jewkes

English 102-034W

Film Analysis

06 November 2011

The Pregnancy Pact

            The movie, The Pregnancy Pact, starring Thora Birch, Madisen Beaty, and Camryn Manheim; also directed by Rosemary Rodriguez. This movie is based on a true story about four teenage girls that make a pact to get pregnant.  Gloucester High School faces its troubles with the 18 pregnancies it is dealing with in just two months.  This paper will analyze the pact four girls make, and the way Gloucester High School deals with the increasing rate of teen pregnancies.

            In the beginning of the film, the school nurse is giving a fifteen year old girl a pregnancy test.  This young girl was full of excitement, hoping for a positive reading.  After getting her desired reading, she is nervous to get to her friends to share the good news.  The nurse notices her strange amount of excitement and is taken aback.  This scene shows the teenage girl had no thoughts about her future, or how she would take care of a baby, but how she would be like her friends.  This scene, I think, sets the mood for the movie because the eagerness the teen feels to become pregnant; it expresses that perfectly.

            Further into the film, there is a scene where a PTA meeting is taking place.  During this meeting it is stated that the daycare inside of the school is costing the school budget $13,000.00 per slot.  A reporter, a past local of the town, takes a stance about how absurd it is to be spending so much for a daycare slot when birth control is financially the better choice.  However, there is much dispute from one of the teenagers mothers who just happens to be head of this meeting.  She feels handing out condoms is letting the kids think it is okay to have sex.  This scene represents how one-sided the parents present are being about the teen pregnancies and how the school, in a way, is making it okay for teenagers to have babies.  This scene is also showing how much these parents at the meeting are willing to spend from their school budget on a daycare slot for one teenage mother rather than taking that money and putting it towards an awareness program for the whole school.

            As the movie nears to a close, there is a scene where the father of one teenage mother, Sara, has started dating another girl.  As the teen mother watches them walk away, her eyes well up with tears and she touches and glances down at her full term belly.  By her physical reaction and the eye contact made by her and her baby’s father you can see the sadness she feels about lying to her boyfriend and trying to get pregnant on purpose.  When Sara was asked about her “…ruined future…, hopes for college,” (Rabinowitz) the response was “…these were never her dreams, she answers. All she ever wanted was to stay where she was, never to go anywhere else: Stay, marry and have babies—that was happiness to her and she wanted nothing more.” (Rabinowitz)

            Although this movie is based on a true story, not all the facts were true.  “In reality there was no pregnancy pact at Gloucester High. A couple of girls who were friends agreed to help each other raise their babies when they discovered they were pregnant and the school principal and the media distorted this into being an agreement to get pregnant at the same time.” (www.IMDb.com)  The principal, Joseph Sullivan, of Gloucester High School stated about the original pregnant girls, "We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy.” (McLeod) 

            The Pregnancy Pact, shows how some teenagers can be naïve.  They do not think about the consequences of their actions, just how they “think” it will get them the result they desire.  This film portrays teens that would go to great lengths to be like one another, and a school that helped current teen mothers with very expensive daycare instead of educating them about birth control.  In this movie, less is done to prevent pregnancy and more to help the teens after they have already gotten pregnant.   

Works Cited

McLeod, Kimberly.  “Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High.”  Time Magazine 18 June 2008: n. page.  Web.  6 Nov. 2011.

Rabinowitz, Dorothy.  “Sex and the Schoolgirl.“ Wall Street Journal 24 Jan.  2010: n. page.  Web.  6 Nov. 2011.

The Internet Movie Database.  Amazon.  1990-2011.  Web.  6 Nov. 2011.

The Pregnancy Pact.  Dir Elizabeth Rodriguez.  Lifetime Movie Network, 2010.  DVD.