Toppenish teen fakes pregnancy as school project

[Viva_La_Revolution]

Gaby Rodriguez would worry whenever anyone asked to touch her baby bump.

It wasn't because she felt shy or embarrassed. It was because the bulge - fashioned from wire mesh and cotton quilt batting - didn't actually contain a baby.

For the past 6 1/2 months - the bulk of her senior year at Toppenish High School - the 17-year-old A-student faked her own pregnancy.

Only a handful of people - her mother, boyfriend and principal among them - knew Gaby was pretending to be pregnant for her senior project, a culminating assignment required for graduation.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014835...

Gaby!

[Mimosa]

1. James O'Keefe called. He's looking for a 'journalism' intern n/t

[FSogol]

2. So Gaby is the anti-Bristol Palin?

Cool project, btw.

[XemaSab]

3. What an interesting experiment!

[Horse with no Name]

4. I expect this turned out to be a great project!

She found out firsthand how teens are treated. WTG Abby....great topic!

[ejpoeta]

5. i couldn't post on there but wanted to reply to that idiot that said she was selfish.

the girl gave up her entire senior year for this project and endured comments and all kinds of crap for this project. selfish is the last thing i would call it.

[Horse with no Name]

6. I was so impressed that she was able to do it

What a wonderful young woman to do what she did. It rocked the socks off of any social experiment performed by a HS student that I have ever seen.

[Kceres]

7. College scholarship award, please!

Great project. Bet her boyfriend caught grief, too.

[Brickbat]

8. I hope she learned that a pregnant woman doesn't have to allow anyone to touch her belly.

[HockeyMom]

9. Required video I had to watch in Florida

on teen STD's, pregnancy, teen birth defects, etc. To say it shocked me, would be an understatement. Oh, no, not for they reasons they wanted, but for the MISINFORMATION and blatant RELIGIOUS message it sent.

I raised two daughters in New York. I came of age there in the 60s. I have hardly led a sheltered life, but this required video for STAFF made me want to throw something at the computer.

Give these kids REAL INFORMATION, not somebody with a Bible Belt, UTOPIA, UNREAL WORLD misinformation. I wasn't born yesterday, or in a small two bit town, you morons.

[KingOfLostSouls]

10. Toppenish was next town over from my hometown

the yakima valley is mostly hispanic and native and yeah, this girl is pretty badass.


good job for her.


and that thing about being worried her brothers would beat up her boyfriend, lol, yup thats the valley for ya.

[Boudica the Lyoness]

11. I think this is awful

She lied to her brothers and friends to get a better grade. Sticking a wad of cotton batting under your shirt and telling your peers and family it is actually a baby is deceitful. What the hell was this to prove besides the fact she's a fucking liar? Really though, was it to prove that people look down on pregnant teenagers that have no way of supporting a baby on their own?

Please enlighten me on this one.

[bluestate10]

12. I watched the video before coming on DU.

The girl did not do the project to get a grade. She was conducting a social experiment in the first person. Sort of like the caucasian woman and man that took melanin and made their skin dark to see life from the perspective of people that were then called negroes. The teen conducted a bold and imaginative experiment. My hope is that she took excellent notes and writes a meaningful book. The Congressional delegation for her state should offer her a summer internship, working in Congress. I see her as having what all teens should have, imagination, courage, inquisitiveness and discipline.

[Boudica the Lyoness]

13. I understand why a white person would pose as a black person

It doesn't happen very often and is interesting to see the world through a different eyes of someone of a different race, but teen pregnancy is common. Why not just interview girls who have gone through it, ask them how it changed their lives. I don't see it at all on the same level as the racial social experiment. To be black in this world you can end up getting yourself in a lot danger.

I would never call faking a pregnancy as bold or imaginative. It reminds me of those women who pretend to be pregnant and then cut some other woman's baby out of her belly, or like in the 'old days' when girls would pretend to be pregnant to get a boy to marry them.

Any dip shit can stuff something up their shirt and pretend to be knocked up. If the girl had done this same experiment 25 - 50 years ago, then I would have called her bold etc.

Write a book....I think not.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. Does the video explain what she and her boyfriend said they were planning to do?

I ask because his parents weren't told about the project. They had months of thinking their son had got a 17 year old pregnant - and what? That he was going to let her deal with it all on her own? That'd they'd move in together somewhere? It could have put quite a strain on that parent-son relationship.