It is undoubtedly a depressing and distressing headline: “More girls aged 10-14 get pregnant in the Philippines.”

While there is a very faint bright spot in the bleak report provided by the country’s Commission on Population and Development (POPCOM)—the incidence of teenage pregnancies among girls 15 to 19 years old decreased between 2017 and 2018, but only by less than 1%—the rest of the details paint an alarming picture of how low the collective Filipino culture’s regard is for the safety and well-being of young girls, especially those who are poor.

Early onset of menstruation is one of the many factors listed behind the rise of teen pregnancies within such a young age range but that can’t account much for why there were 2,250 babies born to girls under 15 years old in 2018. Institutional factors, which POPCOM pointed out as the lack of proper information dissemination and provision of access to family planning services, are the major players because these are areas where changes could be realistically done and bring about results.

Unfortunately, that’s where the low regard comes in, with the continued resistance from religious sectors against wider-reaching practical measures that could help protect more girls from becoming mothers when they’re far from ready for that responsibility. As POPCOM chief Juan Antonio Perez III pointed out, institutional work helped decrease the rate of pregnancies among 15- to 19-year-olds. When done properly, it will work on a younger age group. But that huge task simply cannot be done by one governmental department.  “It should be more cultural: We need to get more institutions and adults involved,” Perez told GMA Network.

Sure, we have the Reproductive Health law—but it is still not fully implemented, with the provided reasons from the opposition a matter of not just sexism and misogyny but also classism, packaged in “religious” and “moral” outrage.

In 2013, then-European Union Ambassador Alistair MacDonald told The Philippine Star that the total fertility rate among the richest quintile of the population is 2.0, whereas the poorest quintile is 5.9 children per woman. With the continued resistance against the full and proper implementation of the RH law, impoverished girls and women are further trapped in a cycle of generational poverty where they give birth to kids who would probably fall into the same circumstance of having more children than they could physically, emotionally, and financially afford to raise.

Is this a case of the haves not caring if the have-nots spiral further into have-nothingness? The lack of urgency from various social sectors and those in power to address such a long-standing issue seems to say yes. Plus, the utter lack of financial resources keeps the poorest among us reliant on paltry dole-outs. The daily struggle to survive keeps them too busy to realize that they deserve and should ask for better, not just from the government but from the institutions they put their faith in, i.e., the Catholic church.

Besides, the RH law has limitations when it comes to minors. It wasn't only until December 2020 that the House of Representatives passed a bill to raise the age of consent from 12 to 16 years old—still too young, in my opinion. For comparison, anyone who wants to formally participate in the local and national political decision-making processes has to be at least 18 years old. Yet in personal matters that could also gravely affect their future, why are those who are a couple of years too young to register to vote can somehow already be left to their own devices when it comes to having sexual contact?

Furthermore, the RH law also prohibits anyone under 18 from accessing contraceptives at public health clinics sans parental consent. So for minors who are either sexually curious or are already sexually active, it’s a lose-lose situation. (The same rule applies to getting an HIV test.) They can theoretically consent to having sexual contact with someone else, but they have no power to protect themselves from the ramifications of unprotected sex, even if they wanted to. We shouldn’t be so surprised then to hear of babies having babies, since they’ve been basically set up to fail.

What’s even scarier is that most teen pregnancies are the result of coercion, with older men grooming and raping really young girls. During a POPCOM press conference last Valentine’s Day for the passage of the Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Bill, Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development executive director Romeo Dongeto pointed out, “What we noted in the data from 2018 is that the partners of the teenage mothers are apparently older than them.”

It’s been an observable pattern within the past few years: In 2014, for example, only 64% of the pregnancies and births among the 10- to 14-year-old age group had resulted from a sexual relationship with a partner of a similar age; for the 15- to 20-year-old age group, more than 100,000 out of 151,000 births had older men as the fathers.

Senator Risa Hontiveros’ Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Bill is a measure toward a more comprehensive approach in promoting sexual and reproductive health, specifically among a young and vulnerable demographic. If passed into law, it will be implemented by an inter-agency Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Council comprised of various government organizations, the better to understand how to provide comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) that fits the needs of adolescents, from the pregnancy prevention level to the care and social protection of teenage parents. It will have parents, guardians, schools, and local government units more involved and working together—because it seems that the world has forgotten that it takes a village to raise a human being.

This is where the importance of institutional work comes in. We can’t afford to wait for cultural shifts to happen first, for the conservative-minded to catch up with current reality and for the indifferent to start caring, because the staggering rise in teenage pregnancies constitutes a national emergency—and one with economic ramifications. According to the report by GMA Network, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia cited Php33 billion worth of lost income in the country due to teenage pregnancy.

It isn’t enough to pray and hope that kids remain pure and innocent about sex; technology and social media have significantly changed how younger generations get to learn about the world. All the hand-wringing about “bad outside influences” just denies the inherently curious nature of that time in a person’s life and continues to propagate the misconception that sex is dirty and evil (or sacred and special, it’s hard to keep up with the fundamentalists’ arguments).

Adolescence is a period of transition from childhood to adulthood. It’s not the most comfortable time for anyone, what with the hormonal changes affecting one’s body, emotions, behavior, and self-image, and teenagers need to be in an environment where they feel safe to explore these changes while learning about the meaning of consent, self-respect, and having the agency to set and maintain boundaries. It’s about helping them be prepared to become mature and responsible adults with a healthy view of sex, relationships, and intimacy. And anyone who has ever been a student would know how hard it is to learn in an environment that’s steeped in denial and moralistic judgment.  

Also, thoughts and prayers are no deterrent to sexual predators who prey on literal children, including those who wield traditional cultural beliefs and practices as reason, i.e., adult men who sign up for arranged marriages with child brides. Of course, there is the all-too-familiar scenario of older men offering financial support to young girls in exchange for sexual favors or a sexual relationship, in some cases with the consent of the girls’ parents. Laws that provide protection to children would be much more effective and they could bring about lasting and significant cultural changes that would ultimately be the silver bullet to this crisis.

Teenage mothers also have particular needs, especially since they usually experience isolation and have even less access to healthcare services and educational and economic opportunities. The Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Bill would ensure that they won’t get trapped under the burden and stigma of too-early parenthood, that they and their babies won’t fall through the cracks. With its social protection component, it will aim to provide health services suited to a teenage mother’s physical, mental, and psycho-emotional needs, from pre-natal to post-natal; livelihood programs and skills training that can equip teen parents with the means to generate income; continued CSE for teen parents to prevent repeat pregnancies; and strengthened social protection plus legal, medical, and psycho-social assistance for teen mothers who are victims of sexual violence and/or abuse.

In short, should it pass and become law, Teenage Pregnancy Prevention will ensure that the state won’t abandon these very young parents at a time when they very much need help.

The steep rise in teen pregnancies in the country is a national emergency that will have long-term effects. We have already failed so many young girls with our backward cultural views and the lack of legislative protection for them; we shouldn’t punish them further by treating them like lost causes. And we certainly must do everything we can to give these kids a fighting chance to realize a future of their own choosing.

This piece was commissioned by a local feminist website in February 2020 but didn’t get published. Lead image by Isaac Taylor on Pexels.