Most days when you hear about teen pregnancy in the news there is an air of tragedy in the situation. Though some teens receive support from their families, others do not. While some teens talk with their parents and get support - and receive medical care - others still make an effort to hide their pregnancies for one reason or another.

Ultimately, however, there are very few stories about teen pregnancy that end in the same way that one story out of Minnesota in which a teenage woman who had hidden her pregnancy and not had the support of family and others gave birth to her baby and, rather than taking advantage of the state’s Safe Haven law that would have allowed her to give up the child no questions asked, Nicole Beecroft instead chose to stab her infant daughter to death. After waiving the right to a trial by jury, Beecroft was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison for the crime.

You can read more about this tragic story below:

(source)In the end, Judge Mary Hannon ruled Monday that the evidence was clear: Oakdale teenager Nicole Beecroft planned the death of her newborn daughter, stabbed her more than 100 times and threw the baby’s body into a trash can outside her house.

The judge found Beecroft guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced her to life in prison without parole.

Beecroft, dressed in a brown suit with her hair stretched into braided pigtails, wept when Hannon pronounced the verdict in Washington County District Court. Bee-croft declined to make a statement before Hannon sentenced her.

“I’m really sad,” County Attorney Doug Johnson said outside the courtroom afterward. “It’s a waste of two lives.”

The trial by judge in a first-degree murder case in adult court — Bee-croft waived her right to a jury trial — is rare, Johnson said. He thinks it’s the first such trial in the 22 years that he’s worked for Washington County.

The attorneys in his office who prosecuted the case, Heather Pipenhagen and John Fristik, said Beecroft had considered leaving the baby at a hospital before she gave birth at her home in the early morning hours on April 10, 2007, but instead decided to kill her. Minnesota law permits such abandonment within 72 hours of birth to ensure a baby’s welfare.

Beecroft stabbed the baby 135 times in the neck, chest and abdomen. Several of the wounds penetrated the baby’s vital organs, Hannon said before she sentenced Beecroft.

“Defendant Beecroft denied her pregnancy and made no plans for the child’s future,” Hannon said from the bench. She also said Beecroft made false statements to investigators.

I don’t know how this particular situation came to be, nor do I have a sense of what could have prevented it. But what I do know is this: there is little that is more tragic that a teen in crisis who turns to drastic measures and acts on impulse.