Teen girls at a Massachusetts high school may have made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together, according to a published report.

The Time Magazine report said that this school year, 17 girls from Gloucester High School became pregnant. The school, which has about 1,200 students, usually has about four pregnancies a year.

School principal Joseph Sullivan told Time that half of the girls confessed to the pact.

Sullivan said that school officials' suspicions were raised when more girls than usual turned up at the school clinic requesting pregnancy tests. Some of the girls "seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," said Sullivan.

None of the pregnant girls is over the age of 16. Some of the fathers are students at the same high school. However, Sullivan said that one of the fathers is a believed to be a 24-year-old homeless man.

Gloucester, a small town of 30,000 people located about 50 km north of Boston, is staunchly Catholic. The Time story reported that in the wake of the rash of pregnancies, school health officials wanted to be able to dispense birth control pills to students. However, some parents protested that plan.

The school has an on-site daycare to encourage teen parents to stay in school.

The story is gaining some attention just as teenage pregnancy issues are coming to the fore in popular culture. The recent independent film Juno featured a wise-cracking teen who gets pregnant after having sex with her boyfriend for the first time. And Britney Spears's 17-year-old sister, Jamie-Lynn, gave birth to a baby girl on Thursday morning.