THE Commission on Population and Development (POPCOM) recently brought to public attention the pre-pandemic 2019 increase in the number of teenage pregnancies. This should serve as impetus for Congress to expedite action on relevant pending bills, including House Bill 6579, the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Act.
POPCOM noted that in 2019 a total of 62,510 minors gave birth, of which 2,411 of them were aged 10 to 14 years old. Meanwhile, the University of the Philippines’ Population Institute estimated that teenage pregnancy may have increased by 21.04 percent as a result of the nationwide lockdown. It makes sense to check the latest data on hospital childbirths and birth registrations from January 2020 and until now, so we can check if teenage pregnancies and childbirths increased during the community quarantines. Perhaps, a sampling of verified data from Department of Health regional medical centers and some of the largest private hospitals might give some initial indications on the current state of teenage pregnancies in some parts of the country. Latest available data from the Philippine Statistics Authority show there were 1,038,711 babies born from January to September 2020, but the figure does not have breakdowns or details as regards age of the parents and month in which the babies were born.
What would count as “lockdown babies” would be those born around November 2020 to February 2021 or eight to nine months after the enhanced community quarantine imposed from March to May 2020. It would be interesting to see if there indeed was an increase in childbirths from June onwards compared to past years.
With adolescent pregnancy now being tagged as a “national social emergency” by experts and cause-oriented groups, the proposed Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Act could be made part of the whole-of-government approach in arresting maternal mortality and morbidity that have immense repercussions on our country’s sustainable development agenda. Among the important provisions of the measure are the development of culturally-sensitive, age, and development-appropriate adolescent reproductive health curriculum; mandatory establishment of functional local teen centers for adolescent health and development; and social protection for teenage mothers or parents and victims of sexual violence, among others.
With most of our adolescent mothers belonging to the poor and vulnerable sector, we might be seeing more generations of Filipinos trapped in poverty if we fail to act on this now. Indeed, providing solutions to this problem is equally important as all other measures we need to institute as we pursue rapid and inclusive recovery moving forward post COVID-19.
