A Baby Boom in The Philippines

Somewhere in the slums of Tondo, Manila, young girls are often seen with a toddler in their arms.
It is easy to predict that those toddlers are their young siblings, but, for their community, it is
unsurprisingly their child. Teenage pregnancy in the Philippines has long been a rising issue that remains
to affect the lives of several adolescents and the people surrounding them. Even if generations of great
minds already did what they could do to solve it, multiple reasons still cause the rate of teenage
pregnancy here in the Philippines to remain rising.

One of which is the lack of sexual education for adolescents in their schools. In fact, in December
2012, Former President Benigno S. Aquino III signed the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive
Health Act of 2012 into law. The RH Law aims to provide universal and free access to nearly all
contraceptives, birth control, and other protection, as well as to mandate the implementation of
comprehensive sexual education (CSE) for schools throughout the country. Schools usually teach and
explain only the basic concepts about our sexual and reproductive health, which is not enough.
Adolescents today have the right to be educated about the consequences of premarital sex, such as the
possible transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and unwanted pregnancies.

Yet as observed, the implementation of the RH Law in schools is somehow not really applied, all
because sexual health is still considered a taboo topic in our country. Today, 80% of the population in the
Philippines is Catholic. That explains why this country is very much conservative, with its Catholic morals
dominating our laws. The Philippine Catholic Church is the largest opposition in the fulfillment of applying
comprehensive sexual education (CSE) in the curriculum of our schools and generally the implementation
of the RH Law. They stated that widening the access to contraceptives is anti-life, and educating
adolescents about their sexual health and the dangers of sexual activity is a major attack on the authentic
human values and Filipino cultural values. If teenagers do not have a chance to be educated regarding
sexual activities in their schools, then another option is to ask their parents instead, right? The problem is,
the parents their selves are not comfortable with doing so. They usually just passively tell their children
the dangers of early sexual activities. Due to the overly conservative and pro-life traits of the majority of
Filipinos, discussions about the risks of unprotected sexual activities, especially for adolescents, are seen
as unusual and weird.

Unfortunately, unwanted pregnancies among young women happen not only because of the
reasons stated above but also because of cruel perpetrators wandering across the country. "I was scared
to report him to my mom and the police, he was threatening me that he would kill my mom if I did”, that
was the reason a young girl said in one documentary done by Kara David recently why she chose not to
speak about the continuous sexual abuse of her stepfather to her. She endured the agony of her
experience up until she found out she was pregnant with her stepfather's child. Her teachers realized her
growing belly and then had the chance to tell authorities and her mother about her dreadful dilemma. It is
scary to think that rapists are not only strangers hanging out on the streets, but can also be the ones
inside your own home. Statutory rape is the illegal sexual activity between an adult and a minor below the
age of consent in the Philippines. These inhumane individuals must be penalized for breaking their
dreams and ruining the lives of innocent adolescents.

The absence of comprehensive sexual education in schools throughout the country, the dangers
of sexual activities, and adolescents’ sexual health still being seen as a taboo topic due to the immense
influence of the Catholic church and its morals in our country, and the accidents of child sexual abuse and
forced sex are just some of the events that cause unwanted childbearing among young Filipinas. If the
rates of teenage pregnancy continue to rise like this, the country would suffer from fleeting inflation of its
population, which would then result in more cases of poverty in the country, affecting thousands of young
women in the Philippines.
Sources:

- https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/08/21/787921856/photos-the-hidden-lives-of-
teen-moms
- https://reproductiverights.org/philippine-supreme-court-upholds-historic-reproductive-health-law/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij9WYV7cTJA