Nancy Travis and Camryn play opposing sides in THE PREGNANCY PACT
A teenage girl visits the school nurse and, upon hearing that her pregnancy test is positive, she walks down the school halls and finds her girlfriends clustered together in the hall. She approaches them, tells them the news and…they high-five each other. Oh, and some of the other girls are pregnant, too. This scene is drawn from Lifetime’s original film “The Pregnancy Pact,” which airs this weekend and looks at the real-life story of a school in Gloucester, MA where there were multiple teen pregnancies (18, to be exact) and a group of teenage girls who don’t quite get the repercussions of having a baby at such a young age. Is stressing the idea of abstinence the way to stop the ‘epidemic’ or should the school be providing free condoms to teens? Both sides of the argument are brought up and addressed in this film, which stars Nancy Travis, Camryn Manheim and Thora Birch as a blogger searching for answers and dealing with some past personal issues that relate to what she’s seeing with the teens she is interviewing.
Madison Beaty plays good girl Sara who joins the PREGNANCY PACT
To find out more about the makings of this film, the alarming facts about teen pregnancy and how the doors of communication need to be burst open, I talked earlier this week with Executive Producer Bob Sertner about the film and how he has high hopes for what educators, parents and, most importantly, teenagers take from the film.
Jim Halterman: How did “The Pregnancy Pact” get started as a project for you?
Bob Sertner: Once upon a time there was a little article in Time magazine that got all of our attention. When I read that article, the thing that popped out to me wasn’t the words ‘pregnancy pact’ it was 18 pregnant high school kids in Gloucester. As soon as I saw that article and Lifetime called me about the article I said, ‘Oh my God, Not only is there a movie here [but] my idea has the sort of built-in interest with the pregnancy pact and what we can do with this is turn it into a much bigger piece about the problem of teen pregnancy today.’ I think it’s an opportunity, especially because of the town of Gloucester, to show both sides and really try to hit both arguments and throw a family into the middle of that crisis so that’s what I set out to do.
Nancy Travis's character fights for abstinence, not free condoms in schools.
JH: Outside of Lifetime’s marketing of the movie, how do you get the word out to the people who need to see it he most – teenagers?
BS: I’m really proud of this whole series of movies I’ve done and the fact that they do get into schools but, for me, the high school audience is as important – if not more important – than the Lifetime audience. The fact is many of my movies play in high schools in sex education classes because they get the messages to kids that aren’t preachy but instead dramatizes the issue for teenagers. It’s something I’m really proud of. I can’t tell you how many phone calls and emails we get about these movies and I expect this one to take its place where teenagers lives are changed because we opened their eyes to something they might not have otherwise seen. To that end, we work with a group called The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and they do a whole parent and teachers guide that Lifetime both supports on their website and public service announcements. We actually got Camryn Manheim to do a little series of PSAs but the message is pushed very hard that teenagers in schools and parents should all be looking at this movie and a whole list of questions for parents to talk to their kids about, for kids to ask their parents and for high school educators to use for classroom conversations. They’re all published and, in fact, are being worked out this week to be sent out to school and be published on the lifetime website. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of.
JH: It was almost creepy how these girls were excited about all being pregnant together. Did that all come from the Time magazine article?
BS: When I did start to get into the research one of the interesting things I took out of those articles was the idea of girls high-fiving each other in the hallways after they found out they were pregnant. That sparked a lot of research for me and what I found was that a shocking number of teenagers don’t understand the consequences or don’t stop to think about the consequences of if there actually is a baby in their lives. The high-fiving and the fact that teenagers don’t stop to think about the consequences made me dramatize it that way.
JH: The movie doesn’t really point a finger at who is to blame for the situation but does it all basically come down to communication?
BS: If I had one message that I want people to come away with this movie it’s this ‘Parents talk to your kids.’ When there is a dialogue and conversation, it makes a huge difference. The pregnancy rates drop off so quickly when there are present parents who are talking to their kids. I try to design these movies and I try to encourage parents to watch with their kids and, if anything, what I want to come out of these movies is the dialogue and to get them to talk about these issues.
“The Pregnancy Pact” airs on Lifetime on Saturday at 9/8c. For more information and to learn how YOU can talk to your teens about this issue, go to http://www.mylifetime.com/movies/the-pregnancy-pact and http://www.thenationalcampaign.org.
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Jim Halterman spends his days interviewing the top tier of talent and creative forces in the entertainment world and then, because he's that kind of guy, he brings it all to YOU! And, because we all like free stuff, check back often for giveaways!! 
