THE Philippine Commission on Population and Development is urging President Rodrigo Duterte to declare teenage pregnancies a national social emergency.
The commission’s board of directors has drafted an executive order for Duterte, according to PopCom Executive Director Juan Antonio Perez III.
Though the board has recognized teenage pregnancies as a national social emergency for years, Perez told ANC’s “Dateline” that they are still “pushing for a formal declaration from Malacañang.”
“For the past five years, we’ve had 300,000 families started by minor children, and that impacts on poverty in this country,” said Perez.
He added, “If we declare it an emergency, young people should have easier access to family planning and reproductive health services.”
Last week, PopCom reported that births among girls ages 15 years old and below rose by 7% in 2019 compared to the previous year’s data provided by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
“In 2019, 2,411 girls considered as very young adolescents aged 10 to 14 gave birth, or almost seven every day. This was a three-fold increase from 2000, when only 755 from the said age group gave birth,” said the commission.
It also noted that this is the ninth year that the rate of teenage pregnancies has increased since 2011.
“Overall, the number of Filipino minors who gave birth in 2019 increased to 62,510, which was slightly higher than the 62,341 minors in 2018,” PopCom said.
Philippine Senator Win Gatchalian has likewise urged the government to improve its response to the country’s growing number of teenage pregnancies.
“Even before the pandemic hit our country, the rise in teenage pregnancies could already be considered a crisis,” he noted in Filipino.
The senator said that the government needs to help young people and their parents prevent teenage pregnancy through “intensified health and education programs.”
“Parents need to be capacitated in terms of effectively talking to their children about sexuality and reproductive health issues,” Gatchalian added.
