Norplant joins war on teen pregnancy - Baltimore, Maryland schools to offer long-term birth control implant - Cover Story

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 8, 1993 | by Gayle Hanson

"As soon as I had my baby I found that my teenage years were over," Kimberly recalls. "After you have a kid a lot of your money goes toward stuff for your baby. Well, Dr. Stith really wanted me to come back to school. So I've come back. But it's been tough."

Kimberly soon realized that she did not want to have another child. So when she heard about Norplant she decided to give it a go. Involved in a stable relationship with her baby's father, it seemed like a good idea. "When people talk about Norplant as being akin to genocide they are completely wrong," she says. "I am willing to take responsibility for myself, and for using it. The fact of the matter is that right now I don't want to have any more children."

As Stith tours the school, she is greeted everywhere with the sound of politely enthusiastic "good mornings" that would not be out of place at Miss Porter's School - that is, until she suddenly is accosted by a young woman with tears running down her face. The two disappear for several minutes until Stith finally emerges.

"She's 15," Stith says. "And her baby was taken from her because she was homeless. Well, the state finally found her a home, and she's got her baby back, but it's out in Baltimore County. So now they are saying that she can't continue to go to school here. Well believe me, that child is going to be staying in school."

Chrissifanie T. is a classmate of Kimberly's and she, too, is a Norplant user. Chris, as she is called, says she is 17; she's the mother of a 6-month-old boy, A'nija. Bright and pretty, she is teased by her friends at school for her angelic appearance, which belies her past run-ins with police.

The product of a broken home, Chris came to Baltimore to live with her mother when she discovered she was pregnant. "Well, when I found out I was pregnant my boyfriend told me that he'd planned it," she says. "I was so scared and surprised by it, but I also did kind of want a baby."

Several days later, Chris's story shifts dramatically in the presence of her mother, a nurse who will not allow A'nija's father to come into the house and has forbidden Chris to see him, saying he is doing nothing to support his son.

Chris, on the other hand, believes her baby's father is sending her money and that her mother is keeping it from her.

Now, instead of repeating her story that her baby's father planned to impregnate her, Chris claims that they were using a condom for the first time when she got pregnant.

"I had been trying to get pregnant, but then I stopped and we were using a condom when I got pregnant," she says. "But I did want a baby. I wanted someone to love me because I didn't think my parents did."

The strain of having a new baby in the house has been difficult for Chris's mother, Sharon. They had to move into a less expensive apartment, and now they find themselves buttressed by crack houses on either side of their tidy row house. Sharon must get up for work at 4 a.m. in order to make the drive from Baltimore to her nursing home job in the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, Md. But she is determined that Chris finish school and, if possible, go on to college, no matter what the sacrifice.