DIPOLOG CITY—The increase in the number of teenage pregnancies among public and private high school and college students in the Zamboanga Peninsula and other regions can be stemmed through effective guidance counseling by school authorities and concerned parents, a population officer said.
Commission on Population Region 9 Director Reynaldo Wong, in a recent forum at the Zamboanga del Norte National High School in this capital city, discussed the risk and consequences of pre-marital sex among those too young and unprepared to raise a family.
Wong underscored the need for appropriate school sex education programs among teenage female and male students enjoining them to act responsibly since by doing so they would not only gain the esteem of their future lifetime partners but also prevent negative consequences of unplanned pregnancy.
He cited the complications of forced marriage, financial problems, discriminatory treatment from peers and community and other unwarranted effects.
The regional PopCom chief urged secondary school and college administrators and guidance and counseling teachers to “intensify efforts “by making their students fully understand the formidable effects of engaging in pre-marital sex.”
Dipolog City Mayor Evelyn Tang-Uy said it would be “a big heartbreak for a family, especially from a rural community, if a daughter gets pregnant in her adolescence and be forced to abandon her studies and career.”
“Good moral and spiritual values of a family mold young girls and boys to dignified adolescents and adults,” Uy said.
Wong noted that last school year saw the rise in teenage pregnancies in Zamboanga City and other urban and other semi-urban areas in the Zamboanga Peninsula and the Southern Philippines which reportedly registered a 15 percent increase or about 19,500 females.
An earlier PopCom study revealed that not a few teenage girls perform their sexual activities with their boy friends in their own boarding house or motels “out of love.”
The country’s teenage pregnancy rate was reportedly the “highest among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations six major economies at 53 births per 1,000 women aged between 15 and 19.”