Senator Sonny Angara on Tuesday, February 7 urged the government to act with dispatch on the rising pregnancies among very young girls and teenagers, noting that majority of the registered adolescent live births involved men who are older than the girls.
Citing data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), Angara noted that births of mothers aged 10 to 14 years old have increased every year since 2016 even as the overall birth rate among all adolescents has declined.
According to the PSA report, the senator noted that majority of the registered adolescent live births involved men who were three to five years older than the girls. Even more concerning was the data on fathers who were more than 10 years older than the teenage mothers, which the PSA pegged at six to seven percent annually from 2016 to 2020.
The same study showed that the rate of pregnancies among girls aged 10 to 14 has gone up from 11 percent or 1,903 births in 2016 to 2,113 registered births in 2020.
“Teenage pregnancies have been a concern in the country for some time already. The decline in pregnancies among 15 to 19-year-old girls is welcome news but the fact that more girls who are a lot younger are becoming mothers already is very alarming and cannot be left unchecked,” said Angara, chairman of the Senate Committee on Youth.
Angara said there is an urgent need to address this trend in the country in order to come up with a whole-of-government approach in developing a policy framework to prevent early childbearing and its negative consequences.
The senator has filed Senate Resolution No. 462 to seek an inquiry into the alarming increase of pregnancies among 10 to 14-year-olds, noting that aside from the social and moral issues surrounding teenage pregnancies, there are also serious implications on their health and development as individuals.
While the previous Duterte administration has taken significant strides in reducing adolescent pregnancies, “a lot more needs to be done to bring down the cases of teenage pregnancies, particularly among the 10 to 14-year-olds.”
“This effort requires a whole of government approach and an understanding that this is about caring for the welfare of our children and saving lives,” Angara said.
Sen. Risa Hontiveros, chairperson of the Senate Committee on Women, Youth, Family Relations and Gender Equality, said she is glad that her colleague has raised the issue on older men impregnating young girls, noting that this could lead to the stricter implementation of the law Raising the Age of Consent, which expands the protection against statutory rape.
“We see the need to strengthen the implementation of the proposed laws that seek to Strengthening Anti-Statutory Rape bill and formalizing the committee version of all bills on teenage pregnancy so we can strengthen their protection as well as establish the accountabilities and penalties of older men who victimize them,” Hontiveros said in an interview after the Senate committee hearing.
The committee, she said, is also looking at strengthening the existing anti-online sexual abuse and exploitation of children (OSAEC) law.
“I expect our law enforcement agencies will fully implement these new proposed laws the same way we see our PNP (Philippine National Police) and the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) does with the newly-enacted anti-OSAEC law,” the senator said.