Pre-teen pregnancies are rising in the Philippines – critics blame the Catholic Church

Kessa was just 13 years old when she became pregnant with her daughter. A “taboo topic” in the Philippines, she hadn’t felt able to ask anyone about sex and received no education about it in school. 

A year later she had another child, a son, and today, at 17, has forfeited her studies in order to provide for her children. “It’s hard to be a young mum because you need to sacrifice everything for them,” she says.

Kessa’s story isn’t unusual. The Philippines’ teenage pregnancy rates are among the highest in Asia, with more than 500 adolescents becoming pregnant and giving birth every day. The rate is rising among girls aged 10 to 15; data from the Philippine Statistics Authority revealed a 35 per cent hike between 2021 and 2022.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact reason for this increase, said Mary Racelis, a social anthropologist and sociologist from the Philippines, adding that while many cases are likely a result of abuse, children are possibly becoming sexually aware at a younger age.

However, experts are increasingly theorising that the Catholic Church – and the culture of “prevailing conservatism” it’s created in the Philippines – could be partly responsible, by erecting barriers to contraception and sex education.

Almost 90 per cent of the population adhere to a form of Christianity, including Catholicism, which discourages sex before marriage and the use of condoms or the pill.

This has made it very difficult for schools and campaigners to educate young children about sex and emphasise the need for protection, such is the Church’s hold and influence on civic life in the Philippines.

If a local chief executive is “very Catholic” they may opt against allocating funding to reproductive health, said Amina Evangelista Swanepoel, executive director of Roots of Health, a reproductive, maternal and sexual health non-profit in Puerto Princesa. 

Felie Mae Ferman, an adolescent health and development coordinator with the local government in General Santos City, meanwhile told of how her team has to censor sex education in certain schools, removing any mention of contraception. 

“They [the Church] are pro-life and they are discouraging us from promoting using contraceptives to their students,” she said. “But how can we promote the prevention of teenage pregnancy here in the Philippines if they will not embrace the change?”

Church-led misinformation

Such censorship is likely to feed into the fact that only 1.1 million students in the Philippines have access to sex education, out of 32 million, according to United Nations Population Fund estimates.

There is also the issue of Church-led misinformation. Pro-life local authorities in Manila banned contraceptives for 11 years based on claims from the Church that they caused abortions and immorality. Prominent bishops have meanwhile purported that condoms are ineffective.

“There’s a lot of people who for years, from the Catholic Church, would hear that contraception causes cancer, that contraception kills,” said Swanepoel.

“Thousands of young people think that jumping up and down after sex will prevent pregnancy and a similar [amount] believe that if it’s your first time having sex you won’t get pregnant.”  

There have been previous attempts to mandate sex education in the Philippines but these have been slow to materialise. 

In 2012, a reproductive health law was passed, providing free access to contraceptives and mandating government schools to teach sex education. The Church and a number of Catholic groups openly challenged it, which sent the legislation to the Supreme Court. 

At the time, the late Father Melvin Castro, a leading Catholic official in the Philippines, said the legislation risked “opposing God’s will to procreate”.

The Supreme Court upheld the law in 2014, but it has still been slow to roll out, said Shebana Alqaseer, Save the Children Philippines’ technical adviser for adolescent sexual and reproductive health. 

The Supreme Court also introduced a provision that only allows those over 18 to access contraceptives unless they have parental consent – yet another barrier to safe sex.

“With religion, culture, the dynamics of a family in the Philippines, you can’t just go to your parents and ask them,” Alqaseer said. Kessa shared she was worried she’d be seen as “promiscuous.”

Although the conservatism of the Philippines doesn’t look to be fading anytime soon, there are signs that the country is softening its stance on teenage pregnancy.

Last September, a prevention bill, which proposes the creation of a dedicated council tasked with rolling out programmes designed to reduce teen pregnancies, was approved by the House of Representatives. It’s expected to be passed into law later this year by the Senate.

Campaigners meanwhile point to the progress that has been made in getting the topic of teenage pregnancies into the public domain.

“I do think that talking about these things more, collecting the data and having it out in the mainstream is one of the ways to normalise discussions around sex, to make them a little less taboo,” said Swanepoel. “But we still have a lot of issues.”

One such issue is the physical health of the girls falling pregnant, some of whom are as young as 10. It is a side of the debate that often gets overlooked.

Mothers under 15 are twice as likely to die from complications in pregnancy or childbirth as women between the ages of 20 and 30, according to Save the Children. 

“The consequences of early childbearing can be devastating, affecting not only young mothers but also their children, families, and the broader society,” said Alqaseer. 

Although the Catholic Church is held responsible by many for the Philippines’ teenage pregnancy crisis, more research ultimately needs to be conducted to understand the driving factors behind the recent rise.

Until recently, national demographic health surveys only published data on those aged 15 and over. That has since changed; the survey now captures child pregnancies from 10 years old.

The expanded and improved data collection methods on younger age groups could mean “we’re seeing trends or things that we were not seeing before,” said Swanepoel. “Maybe they were always there but just weren’t being recorded.”

But whether the 35 per cent increase in pregnancies of those under 15 is due to improved reporting or a genuine surge, there were 815 more mothers aged 10 to 14 in 2022 compared to the previous year, said Alqaseer. “Even a single birth from a 10 year-old is cause for concern.”

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