I subscribe to something called "Google alerts" and one of my topics is "children's rights". Today something popped up about child pregnancies that really shocked me.
Two nine year old girls became mothers in Chiang Mai, South East Asia according to a survey by the Provincial Administration Department. The national survey conducted from 2000 to 2009 is frightening in its contents. There were eight years who gave birth aged 10, fifteen who had children at the age of 11, seventy five aged 12 and four hundred and eighty one girls became mothers aged 13 years old.
Chiang Mai
This prompted me to look at what is going on in other parts of the world. The average age of the first menstrual period in the Us is 12 years old although this figure varies according to ethnicity. Save The Children found that annually 13 million children are born to women under age 20 worldwide, more than 90% in devloping countries. Complications of pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of mortality among women between the ages 15 and 19 in such areas. The highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the world is in sub-Saharan Africa where women tend to marry at an early age.
Among OECD developed countries the US and New Zealand have the highest level of teenage pregnancy while Japan and South Korea have the lowest. The overall trend in Europe since 1970 has been a decreasing fertility rate. This is due to good sex education and high levels of contraceptive use (eg. Netherlands and Scandinavia), traditional values and social stigmatisation (Spain and Italy) or both eg. Switzerland.
The teenage birth rate in the US is the highest in the developed world (Wikipedia) and the teenage abortion rate is also high. In Europe Denmark, Sweden and France all show a high rate of abortions.
"Abortion is not permitted in Ireland unless there is a real and substantial risk to the life (as distinct from the health of the mother. This includes a risk arising from a threat of suicide. Women may not be prevented from travelling abroad to get an abortion. It is lawful to provide information in Ireland about abortions abroad, subject to strict conditions. It is not lawful to encourage or advocate an abortion in individual cases" Citizens Advice Bureau.
The HSE runs a Crisis Pregnancy Programme which has produced a number of resources to assist parents in providing relationship and sex education to their children. These take the form of booklets with age appropriate information to help parents explain the facts of life to their children. I have recently been speaking with John Flannery of Aids West whose team also provides sex education in schools. This is a great complement to how parents themselves are preparing children to deal with their sexuality.
Teenage Pregnancy
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