Gov’t alarmed over hike in early teen pregnancies

Bersales said addressing early teen pregnancies should begin at the household level reminding parents and guardians of their roles in molding their children as “productive members of the larger Philippine society.” (File Photo: Enrique Guzmán Egas/Unsplash)

MANILA – The Commission on Population and Development (CPD) called for heightened vigilance against adolescent pregnancies as it closely monitors the movement in numbers among young girls between 2021 and 2022.

In a news release on Monday, CPD executive director Lisa Grace Bersales noted that the hike in total live births among girls under 15 years old went up by 35.13 percent, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority — from 2,320 in 2021 to 3,135 in 2022.

“Although live births from adolescent girls, 14 years old and below, is just 0.22 percent of total live births recorded, CPD is still deeply concerned about the increase in adolescent pregnancy, especially among our very young girls,” Bersales said.

Bersales also reiterated the agency’s call for the legislative branch to prioritize the passage of the “Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Bill.”

“We cannot overemphasize the significance of having the bill enacted. It is my strong belief, and that of the agency’s, that its enactment will be essential in addressing the lingering concern of early child-bearing and motherhood among a great number of our juvenile Filipino girls,” she said.

In September last year, the House of Representatives approved on its second reading House Bill No. 8910 or the proposed “Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Act,” which provides for a national policy to arrest the growing number of cases of childbearing and child births among adolescents.

Bersales reinforced the House’s stand on the situation’s adverse effects not only on the affected persons, but on Philippine society in general.

“I underscore Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez’s statement that this issue’s social cost and its negative impact on the national budget could run into billions of pesos—in terms of the government having to take care of young mothers and their babies; not to mention the human-development aspect that we have to take into consideration,” she said.

The bill, Bersales said, will be vital in the implementation of the Philippine Population and Development Plan of Action (PPD-POA) 2023, which was approved by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. via Memorandum Circular 40 on Nov. 14, 2023.

Under the action plan’s eight key strategies is the further advancement of Filipino teens’ health and development, where the phenomenon of early parenthood is specifically addressed.

“PPD-POA covers bolstering of the implementation and promotion of Comprehensive Sexuality Education in schools and communities, improved availability and access of adolescents to sexual and reproductive health and other social services, plus promoting and sustaining youth development and participation initiatives at the community level, with specific tactics to tackle adolescent pregnancies head-on at every level of society,” Bersales said.

With regard to CSE and related measures, she emphasized the need to institute and support strategic interventions, such as those being implemented by the Department of Education that have effectively reduced dropouts due to teenage pregnancies.

Recently, Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Z.

Duterte mentioned in her “2024 Basic Education Report” that DepEd’s promotion of “Alternative Delivery Modes” was able to notably bring down the number of dropouts caused by teenage pregnancies and early marriages.

Bersales said addressing early teen pregnancies should begin at the household level reminding parents and guardians of their roles in molding their children as “productive members of the larger Philippine society.”