Drumwright said that since Memphis' infant mortality rate had been publicized, many churches around the city have said the problem would have been avoided if only these young women had chosen abstinence.
"And yes, that's important," Drumwright said. "But still we have the pregnancies, we have the babies, so we need to take care of them, we need to talk to them. And we need to educate the young moms about taking care of their child, and also about birth control and about abstinence."
Wendi Thomas, a local reporter who grew up in Memphis, often asks in her weekly column why poor people don't get more attention from elected officials.
"I think that there are a lot of assumptions that you make, we make about people who are poor -- and unless you have spent time and interacted with people who are poor, you have no idea what their lives are like," Thomas said.
"People who are poor in my experience don't have that same feeling of entitlement to quality housing, to buses that run near where they live, to a grocery store that even has produce that you would want to eat," she added. "And all these things compound upon each other to create a cycle and a system of poverty that seems, it can seem inescapable."
Buying birth control and visiting health care clinics isn't easy when you're without insurance, and you don't own a car. And many of these young mothers are raising babies alone. Nearly 65 percent of black children nationwide grow up with only one parent according to the 2006 U.S. Census American Community Survey.
Simpson hasn't spoken to her father since the day she told him she was pregnant.
"I try not to let it get to me so much, but it's not a day go by that I don't think about where he's at and why would he walk out on me now. You know, this is a big time when you need your father the most to help support you," Simpson said.
"The young women are so hungry for attention," Drumwright said, "and if that's the way they can get it, then that's the way they can get it. Because I do believe a lot of the relationships are very casual, first date, second date.
"It's not a little couple that's been going together necessarily a long time, you know, having a long-term relationship," she added. "It could be something that they just meet up and have sex. And I think that goes back to there not being any men in a lot of the children's lives."
In 2006, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredeson gathered community groups and government agencies for an infant mortality summit meeting in Memphis.
The governor brought his state health commissioner at the time, Dr. Kenneth Robinson, who's also pastor of a Memphis church.
"Every baby deserves a first birthday," Robinson said at the conference. "I want this day to be the day when the people of Memphis and the people of the state of Tennessee stood up together and said: 'We're not going to be silent, we're not going to stand aside as one more child dies in vain.'"
In 2006, 202 babies died. That was far more than the number of homicides in Memphis -- 122 that same year. Even so, it wasn't the babies' deaths that usually made headlines.
"It's a very sad reality that infant deaths don't seem to get the priority, often, that some of the other high profile, newsworthy, six and 10 o'clock news stories do get," said Robinson. "When you really think about it, that infant deaths in this nation account for more deaths than all of the other causes of death combined for children up to the age of 18, we should be marching. We should be absolutely indignant about those numbers."
Officials at the meeting announced state grants to fund more studies and more pilot programs and a billboard advertising campaign.
Dr. Korones remains frustrated.
"I've been going to meetings about this with just chest-beating and programs and so on," Korones said. "But what we need to realize, and I think that we finally do, you're looking at infant mortality as a manifestation of the accumulated social inadequacies that we have tolerated historically. And we happen to be tackling infant mortality.
"There is so much else in that picture, ranging all the way from the proper lifestyle and diet, to the proper education and life itself," he added. "If you're on welfare, and you don't know where your next meal is coming from, and you have to walk wherever it is because you can't buy the gas or whatever those things are, your chances of having a healthy baby are diminished. In this community, when a premature baby is born, society has failed."
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