Morris - unexpected pregnancies

To support an adolescent facing an unexpected pregnancy, what they need most initially is nonjudgmental support. You don’t need somebody to say, “Why didn’t you take your pills?” or “That was stupid.” or “Why do you want to have a baby now?”  You need someone to listen and help them think through where they want to be and what they want to do. There’s always three choices for any adolescent pregnancy: either having an abortion, or staying pregnant and parenting, or staying pregnant and relinquishing and every one of those choices is tough and we always encourage the teen to make the choice that feels best for her inside her, not what feels best for all of the people around her.

And what we’ve found from experience is they will do well with their own choice and they will do very poorly if they’ve been pressured into making a choice that they did not want. So initially what they really need from people that want to support them is a good listening ear, possibly some directed questioning to help them think out all of those paths and feel reasonably confident about what they want and that they’re not being pressured.

We’ve seen kids that were pressured into staying pregnant becoming very depressed. And we’ve seen kids that were pressured into having abortions becoming very depressed and even suicidal. So you have to support them in what they feel is going to be best. And it’s hard for people to do that sometimes but that’s the only thing that works well for the teenager.