Reported for Statewide by Bill Kelly.
There's nothing that makes Wood River all that different from a hundred other Nebraska towns. At Wood River High School, the class of 1998 was no different than any of the others that had graduated before. That is, until you count the number of students who became parents.
[Dana Dooley] "It would end up one girl was pregnant, then the other one. Then there was guys who would be like oh, I'm having a kid. I have no idea what happened."
At Wood River High, Dana Dooley didn't stand out, neither a high achiever or trouble maker. But when Dana got her diploma in May of 1998, she was already two months pregnant. That was not the plan.
[Dana] "Yeah. Very shocked. Scared more so than anything."
Scared of what?
[Dana] "Of what my parents would think and I don't know, Wood River, a small town, what people would say. A lot of stuff was said."
Dana was not the only topic of gossip around town. In fact, it was hard not to know someone graduating that year who wasn't already a parent or about to become one. The numbers are a little hazy but as many as eight of the girls were new moms and seven of the boys were new dads.
[Sue Sochor] "It was talk for quite a while because there was a very large number of girls from that class who did become pregnant and I don't think most of them got married and I think most of them did choose to keep the baby. So yeah, it was kind of a shocker for people."
No one was more shocked than Sue Sochor. She teaches the parenting class at Wood River High School.
[Sochor] "They do seem to run in cycles. One year you will have quite a few and then you will go two or three years without any teen pregnancies."
In Mrs. Sochor's class the students get a clear message, the best way not to get pregnant is to hold off on sex until after you're married.
[Sochor] "I do come from an abstinence-basted theory in that I do think that sex is something that needs to be saved for marriage or-- I don't even like to go with commited relationships because a lot of kids think at 16 they're very committed to their partner."
Did any of that stuff sink in?
[Dana] "You know what, I got an A in that class to tell you the truth but obviously not. I mean she taught us about everything but the only part that sunk in to my class obviously was how to take care of the kids because probably what, 15 people in my class have had kids since graduation. Isn't that about right? 15 or so. Some of this?"
Two years later Dana comes home from her job at an insurance company with her son, Paxton, in tow. Often he is still groggy from daycare. The stigma of being a new teen mom has been blunted by those other young parents Dana knows around town.
[Dana] "There was girls in my class before me who had kids. Two girls before me and then even younger girls had so that made it a little bit easier but if I would have been the first one, it would have been a lot harder."
Paxton now rules Dana Dooley's life. She loves her child. She doesn't always love the life she now lives and shares with other teenage moms.
[Dana] "We talk about the what if. What would we have done if we didn't have kids. What would we be doing right now if we didn't have kids and how everything would be different. I was pretty wild in high school, I will admit. This slowed me down real fast. It was a mistake. I mean I wanted kids but not until I was like married and like 25. That would have been a good age. Have a good job then."
She thought the father might stay with her. He didn't. He is helping financially. So you like being a mom?
[Dana] "Yeah."
What you expected?
[Dana] "A little bit harder."
[Sue Goodman] "38% of 9th graders have had sexual intercourse at least once. 39% of 10th graders have had sexual intercourse at least once. 49% of your 11th graders have had sex once. And then 72% of the 12th graders have had sex. Approximately 10 teens become pregnant each and every day."
Too many?
[Goodman] "Too many. Yeah."
About half an hour east of Wood River is the nearest location for pregnancy and prevention services. About a third of the clients they see here are teenagers. After nearly two decades on the job, Sue Goodman hears the same thing time and time again from young women unexpectedly pregnant.
[Goodman] "Number one, I didn't plan on it happening. That's the case in a lot of it. I don't plan on this happening. I didn't mean for it to happen. But if it was easier to just let it happen, that didn't mean that I was as bad a person as coming in and using birth control and using a condom."
[Educational video] "Where are you going to get the money to pay for a baby?
And if you're a teen mother, you just might not finish high school.
The education programs are available.
So right now you and I have to know how not to have a baby.
There are two ways not to get pregnant. One way is saying no to sex.
The message is clear-- don't have sex until you're ready to have a baby.
Can we slow down a little?
Come on.
I mean can we take it a little slower?
What do you mean?"
[Goodman] "I believe abstinence is the best but that's not what we're seeing in this area. Kids are not choosing to abstain. And if they choose not to abstain, then they need to have an alternative method which would be, you know, get on a method of birth control, using condoms and even that has failure rates."
[Dana] "What are you doing?"
Were you guys using contraception?
[Dana] "No. Not at all. Which was really stupid now that I think about it. So actually it's a wonder that it didn't happen way before I graduated high school because..."
All this advice you got in school?
[Dana] "Never sunk in until afterwards and I'm like oh, yeah, you know."
For Dana's teacher, seeing the number of girls make the same mistake is incredibly frustrating.
[Sochor] "There's a lot more, I don't know if promiscuity is the word that I want to use or not, but a lot more sexual experimentation. I think kids are starting at a lot more earlier age. This is going to tell you what sex your baby is and how much it weighs."
[Student] "It's a boy. Another boy.
I got a boy. Yeah."
In Sue Sochor's class she tries to make clear to the students that raising a child is a tremendous and taxing responsibility.
Congratulations, it's a girl. She is seven pounds, seven ounces and announcing a new baby, I named her Isaiah Dale.
Exercises like this and another where students actually care for a computerized baby doll make an impression on some. Then there are the days when one of their teen mom classmates bring a child to school.
[Sochor] "They're real excited. To them it's kind of just like a new toy for a while, to the other girls. It's real neat because you can hold it and it's cute and it's cuddly and so on. They're not getting the reality, the 24-hour-a-day care type of thing, the being up in the middle of the night and having sick babies and so on. They think it's kind of neat I think."
When you see that, how does that make you feel?
[Sochor] "It kind of upsets me, you know, because it's like you're just kind of contributing to it, to the fact that saying hey, it's okay, we accept this, it's the thing to do."
It still comes as a shock that small towns that pride themselves on high moral values and clean living would have such a problem with teenage sexuality.
[Goodman] "Their behaviors are not matching up to their moral values, their moral value system. Their behaviors are not matching up to that."
[Sochor] "I do think that parents need to send a lot stronger message to their kids that sex is for marriage. You're not emotionally ready for everything that goes with it and you're definitely not ready for having to be a parent. You're still a kid yourself."
Sue Sochor does deal gingerly with contraception. There have been few complaints from parents or the administration perhaps because she so strongly balances that lesson with her message of personal respect.
[Sochor] "I guess that's one of the reasons I feel comfortable with the abstinence because I guess I'm from the old school and my husband and I made the decision not to have sex until we got married. I think a big part of that was because I knew my dad would kill me. I'm serious, a real fear there was part of it. I can stand up there in front of these kids and say-- we dated for six years before we were married. I can stand up there and say you can do it, it is possible."
At the Women's Health Center, Sue Goodman's pamphlets, videos, and discussions of responsibility are still not welcome in many central Nebraska school districts.
[Goodman] "People still have the misconception if you educate then this means that they are going to go out and become promiscuous and become sexually active and that is not true."
[Dana] "My opinion is sex education needs to be when kids are younger. They think that it is bad. My sister is a 7th grader and I think that's a fine time to be teaching it because there's little girls in her class that you don't know. You know, I think 7th grade. You get to be a freshman and a sophomore, there's already kids that have kids that are sophomores in high school. They've already been having sex so obviously the abstinence thing isn't going to work. I think when you're younger."
But Dana Dooley, a mom before she wanted to be a mom, admits she is not sure what would have worked. When you look back at it, what your parents said didn't work, what you learned in school didn't work, religion didn't work. Would anything have gotten through to you?
[Dana] "I don't know. Probably being closer to one of the girls that had a kid maybe and watching and seeing how everything with them worked, you know."
It is perhaps not surprising that the weeks following prom are the busiest times of year at the Women's Health Center. Lots of frightened girls come in for pregnancy tests.
[Sochor] "I do remember one time at a prom the minister giving the benediction saying that when this night is over, I hope that there are no less of us and I hope that there are no more of us."
[Dana] "Go get 'em. Maybe those girls will understand hey, if I don't use anything, that's going to happen to me. I have friends that tell me that the best birth control is seeing me with Paxton. Let's go back this way."

Captioning by Nebraska Captioning Center, Lincoln, Nebraska .