Heaven knows you're likely sick to death of hearing about Jamie Lynn Spears' pregnancy--the resulting media frenzy has been unavoidable. The most nauseating part for me has been the frame of the once "perfect girl" defiled. It's as if sex with consequences makes her impure or wrong--while sex without consequences goes unremarked upon, nay, celebrated. There's no shame in a birth control failure; and if she didn't use contraception, that makes her a member of the group of 1.5 million American females who experience an unplanned pregnancy each year. (Another 1.5 million of us were using some form of birth control the month they had an unexpected pregnancy--yup, 3 million pregnancies a year are unplanned in the U.S.).

The other reason I feel bad for Jaime Lynn is the abuse she's getting because she's decided to keep her pregnancy. Do you think she's the first teenage starlet to see the double lines on the pee stick before marriage? We just don't hear about the others who choose abortion instead of continuing their pregnancy. And since more than one in three American females will have an abortion by the age of 45, I'm betting that some of them are young faces you've seen in the movies, or have voices you've heard on the radio. What to do with an unexpected pregnancy is an extremely emotional and (should be) private decision that many teenagers and women face--it's never easy, and must be even worse when the whole world gets to weigh in. What do you think?