Pregnancy Seminar Offers Teens Information, Options Available

The pamphlets about condoms and frank talk about parenting responsibilities left the 50 teens fidgeting and, amazingly, without a thing to say.

“No questions? None?” asked Bonnie Deabler, director of Childbirth and Parenting Alone.

But far from a heavy-handed sermon, the Tuesday night teen pregnancy seminar at Rogers High had a confessional quality: a quiet exposition of sins imagined and realized, of fears and worries.

A stiff lecture about responsibility for the sexually active. Birth control. Prenatal health care. Counseling for confused young parents.

The seminar was organized by three 17-year-old Rogers DECA students who hoped a few nuggets of wisdom would sink into young heads swimming in hormones.

The three girls - Christina Karsen, Jennifer Erlandsen and Krista Murphy - say there is an information void once the test comes back blue.

“We always hear, ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t,”’ said Karsen. “We wanted to stay away from that, and give information and options.”

Deabler’s program, run by Catholic Family Services, offers counseling, legal advice, mentoring, health care information, transitional housing and child birth preparation and parenting classes.

Statistics show most teen mothers carry and rear their children alone. Many drop out. Just one in 40 gives her baby up for adoption.

In Spokane County in 1994, the pregnancy rate for girls between the ages of 15 and 17 was 49.9 per 1,000. About 21 girls out of every 1,000 had an abortion.

But the seminar also waved a psychological hammer over the kids’ heads, an inevitability when adults ponder their offspring conceiving.

The audience was made up entirely of high school students, most of them cajoled into attendance by DECA students. The marketing students got extra credit for bringing friends.

“The hardest thing you will ever do is be a single parent,” said Deabler.

“I don’t think you should walk around with a five-pound flour bag,” said guest speaker and radio talk show host Mike Fitzsimmons, referring to the popular home ec parenting exercise.

“You should walk around with an 80-pound block and tackle because that’s what being a parent is like.”

It was unclear if the information penetrated the audience’s consciousness. But Erin Serpa says she heard countless lectures and saw a confetti of brochures - and got pregnant anyway.

“I used to listen to all that stuff before I got pregnant and said, ‘Yeah, right, that’ll never happen,”’ said Serpa, who would have graduated from Rogers this year if she hadn’t gotten a G.E.D.

“They don’t know what it’s like to sit up with a baby at night,” she said, looking at the departing students.

Seventeen-year-olds Brianna Grangoth and Jeremy Ybarra got something different from the seminar. They expect to deliver their daughter, Alexis Destiny Adaila Ybarra, in February.

“When I first got pregnant, I was scared,” said Grangoth, holding Ybarra’s hand. “The more options I know about, the less scared I am.”

, DataTimes