Young, gifted and pregnant  When Bee Lavender had a child at 18
she went from 'good kid' and scholarship student to being
shunned as 'human detritus'. But this teenage mother would not
put up with that ...  One cold, clear night in the spring of
1990 I let myself into my parents' home, quietly walked through
the house without turning on the lights, and taped a note to the
bathroom window. It read: "I'm pregnant. I'm sorry."  I was 18,
and the first person in my American, working-class family to
attend university. That alone had been an almost impossible
struggle, in part because I grew up in a place that did not
value education. Girls like me did not break away from my
hometown, but I had departed with four substantial merit
scholarships.  More importantly, I had survived cancer by a
narrow margin, and my health was precarious. Having a child was
a disastrous choice in every possible way.  There was a
predictable, defined way for me to succeed in life and make my
parents proud. I knew that I was supposed to s