Teen pregnancy has found a new and surprisingly not-so-reluctant poster child in the form of Jamie Lynn Spears. The star of Nickelodeon’s “Zoey 101” and little sister to troubled pop icon Britney Spears, Jamie Lynn had enjoyed a scandal free reputation as the “good” Spears sister until now. Now the younger Spears has come to be seen as a “bad” girl in her own right rivaling her sister for tabloid cover time and overnight becoming the unofficial face of teen pregnancy in North America. And while her pregnancy is typical in its nature her situation is very privileged. She has the money to support her child. She has the ability to get proper prenatal care. Her life will be changed but not overly challenged by her pregnancy. Still, privilege aside, Jamie Lynn Spears is in a unique position to shed light on the mis-education, sexually speaking, of America’s youth.

She is also going to change the stereotype North Americans cling to of the kind of girl that gets pregnant in her teens.

As a tween idol Jamie Lynn Spears embodied a sort of innocence that parents wanted their girls to embrace; she was seen as a pretty, smart, sweet and grounded young girl with the world at her feet and a picture perfect future. Her image was the ideal, something that young girls nationwide were encouraged to emulate. Now that she’s a pregnant teen that impressionable young fan base has to be abandoned… or does it? Does her pregnancy have to be depicted to her youngest fans as a shameful thing or is it better presented as an example of actions having real and lasting consequences? Can she help teach the teens of tomorrow, her peers and their parents a lesson worth learning? I think she can. Jamie Lynn Spears shows the world that teen pregnancy really can happen to anybody and through her personal experience she can act to educate a generation of young people who have been sadly deprived of a proper understanding of their own sexuality and its consequences.

In the United States three pieces of federal legislation; Section 510 of the Social Security Act, the Adolescent Family Life Act’s teen pregnancy prevention component and Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE), keep teens like Jamie Lynn in a fog of ignorance regarding sex and sexuality. Since the introduction of this legislation the United States has required public schools to take an “abstinence only” approach to sex education using an eight point definition of abstinence that labels sexual activity as any behavior between two people that may be sexually stimulating; in theory this could include kissing and holding hands! This federally mandated “sex education” teaches teens that sex outside of marriage is harmful and wrong regardless of age. As part of this educational approach contraceptives are not properly discussed and are never advocated. When contraceptive options are presented only their failure rates in terms of pregnancy are noted and their role in preventing the spread of STIs and HIV are not mentioned at all. The United States has a teen pregnancy rate that is twice as high as Canada and Great Britain and eight times higher than Japan. Clearly the scare tactic technique isn’t working and with almost 65% of high school teens reporting that they are sexually active something has to change.

Jamie Lynn Spears arguably comes from a privileged position in society. Presumably she has a good education and access to proper medical advice and care. With her older sister’s pregnancies she has to know how it happens. So how did she get pregnant? How did a good girl with a solid Christian upbringing from the right side of the tracks end up pregnant and unwed at age 16? Thanks to Jamie Lynn the long held stereotype of the pregnant teen as poorly educated, trashy, promiscuous, alcohol drinking, and hard partying, has to be abandoned. Thanks to her middle-class America will have to face the reality that their own daughters, and their daughter’s friends, neighbors and school mates, are the girls getting pregnant in their teens. Jamie Lynn has made it crystal clear that good girls get pregnant too.

In North America close to one million girls under the age of 19 find themselves pregnant every year. Of those million pregnancies an estimated 25% end in abortion, meaning the vast majority of girls opt to carry their baby to term, just like Jamie Lynn. That is a huge number of frightened and marginalized young girls who are shoved in to the shadows of society or held up as shameful examples of what happens to girls who have sex too soon. Jamie Lynn can help change all that because there is no denying that until her pregnancy was announced she was considered to be a golden girl, the ideal daughter and an all-American sweetheart. Jamie Lynn is not an anomaly; she is a norm, since a significant portion of that estimated million teenaged girls in North America who find themselves pregnant every year are girls just like her. They are girls who come from “good” families, girls who have been raised with “proper values," pretty girls, popular girls, smart girls, drug-free girls, in short, girls with a lot going for them. Jamie Lynn Spears is not alone, she is not special, she is, quite literally, one among a million.