3 regions top teenage pregnancy list in South
Credit to Author: ANTONIO P. RIMANDO| Date: Sat, 02 Nov 2019 16:29:43 +0000
ZAMBOANGA CITY: Three regions have registered the highest number of teenage pregnancies in Mindanao, a top official of the Commission on Population (PopCom) said.
PopCom Executive Director Juanito Antonio Perez 3rd identified the three areas as Zamboanga Peninsula (Region 9) at No. 1; Caraga (Region 13), No. 2; and Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), No. 3.
In Region 9, according to Perez, , “five young girls aged 10 to 14 give birth each day, and at least one of them would come from this highly urbanized metropolis” while the others originate from Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga del Norte and Zamboanga Sibugay.
“In the last five years nationwide, there were about one million teenage girls who gave birth,” the PopCom executive disclosed, saying “this is equivalent to 500 young females getting pregnant and giving birth every day.”
An academic study conducted by Zamboanga City-based Rosalyn Ehem, a professor at Western Mindanao State University, said “31.6 percent of teenage women engaged in pre-marital sex ” most likely in motels or in their boarding houses without adopting safety measures like using condoms or necessary tablets or medicines.
City Social Welfare Officer Maria Socorro Rojas said “the most shocking was the case of a 10 year-old rural girl who gave birth last year when she was impregnated by her own stepfather.”
Rojas added that the rural adolescent girl’s case “was not isolated as many other barangay (village) adolescent females give birth because of sexual abuse, among them incest.”
In 2017 alone, she said, the number of known sexually abused children in the city, which boasts of 98 urban and countryside villages, “totaled 126.”
Rojas noted, only a few teenagers “had the courage to report the illicit sexual act, while others hid such ignominy in their lives.”
She said not a few young females get pregnant “largely because of lack of adequate education and information about reproduction, peer pressure and early engagement in sexual activity.”
A concerned local male adult, who requested anonymity, observed that in some instances, “pornography being shown in social media plays a major role in the country’s alarming rise in teenage pregnancy.”