Teenage Pregnancy

The first on my list of possible research topics is teenage pregnancies.  I feel that as I've grown up, this has become a bigger and surprisingly less of a "no-no" topic than it used to be, especially in America.  In high school at my graduation, I counted eight - yes EIGHT! - girls in a class of 230 students that were pregnant and walking across stage. This isn't counting the two that I knew of that were out due to their pregnancies.  That's way too much!  I guess the shock has worn off among some of society as seeing this in teenagers but for me, I am still not sure exactly how I feel about the thought of someone my age being a mother.  Is it wrong and hindering or is it something that I should accept and cope with on my own time?

When an adult, married woman is with child, everyone can't seem to coo and congratulate her enough on her expected child, but when my friend got pregnant in high school, she didn't get the same congratulations, well at least not by everyone. Even though some of our society is changing the way they look at teenagers that are pregnant, there are others who still would disown you if you were their own family.  My friend that was pregnant was among those who wouldn't be looked at again if they were unveiled as being unclean or unpure, so she, without telling many others than myself, went to an abortion agency and had things "dealt with". 

She wasn't the only one of my friends to get pregnant in high school... another was pregnant our senior year.  This paper isn't about abortions though, so I'm not going into the controversy about that, it just goes to show that the pressures of the world are sometimes at east, but depending what values and morals your family has been brought up on, being pregnant will have its different pressures.  

There are many countries in our world where being a pregnant teenager is normal to them.  When the women don't have college to go to after high school, it isn't out of the ordinary to see pregnant girls walking among the rest of society in the masses.

Going back to my first paragraph, wondering how acceptable this situation is really becoming, and thought just popped into my head and I wonder, is America actually more lenient about this topic than I let on?  I just remembered that a new popular TV series that just came onto the family safe channel of HBO is called The Secret Life of an American Teenager where the main character is pregnant.  If this can be openly shown to families across America with children that watch and learn most of what they base life off of on the TV, then there's obviously some acceptance for the situation.  Are people finally coming out and saying, "It's okay"?

Is it really okay?  What should our views be on the topic of teenage pregnancies?  I want to compare America and its moral values along with the opportunities girls are allotted here on the free land with the rest of the world and figure out what's different and what's changing.