A decade later, when the writers for Friends wrote in an out-of-wedlock pregnancy for a popular character, no one made a peep.
Nearly all the teen-agers interviewed, regardless of how they viewed out-of-wedlock pregnancy, shared a common belief: society must get its own act together on the issue.
Others describe her as much more worldly, and one even reports another, earlier, out-of-wedlock pregnancy that ended in stillbirth.
Some are raped, but in either case, most families refuse to support either the mother or the child; an out-of-wedlock pregnancy embarrasses the entire family.
The suicide was originally attributed to Bhaduri's distress over an out-of-wedlock pregnancy.
But because there is a gap between sexual initiation and marriage (if, indeed, they do marry), they run a big risk of out-of-wedlock pregnancy.
Families that struggled to survive decades of Communism have been finished off by alcoholism, crime, out-of-wedlock pregnancies and dwindling salaries.
That's why I helped to establish and support a national effort to reduce out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy.