IN CHARTS: How bad is the adolescent pregnancy problem in the Philippines?

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Is teenage pregnancy caused by hypersexed teens? Data shows that many fathers of children born to teen mothers were much older.

The adolescent pregnancy prevention bill, long fought for by child rights advocates, grabbed the headlines in recent weeks as a campaign led by a religious coalition sought to halt its progress.

Project Dalisay, an initiative by the National Coalition for the Family and the Constitution, is insisting that the comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) section included in the bill would corrupt children. 

The initiative’s de facto leader, former Supreme Court chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, said sex education must be stripped down to the basics, on parts of the body and puberty.

But the advocates who have lobbied for the bill see age- and culture-appropriate CSE as the way to address teenage pregnancies, since part of it teaches children how to navigate unsafe situations in a country rife with children getting pregnant, or sexually exploited.

Here’s a glimpse of the situation of adolescent pregnancies in the Philippines, seen through data.

Young mothers and rape

Data from the Commission on Population and Development (CPD), citing Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) numbers from 2019 to 2023, indicated that there were at least 142,276 adolescent mothers in 2023, which included all child-mothers aged 9 to 19. 

Adolescent mothers comprised 9.82% of the total 1.45 million births among all ages in 2023.

While this total number is lower than the 180,916 recorded in 2019, the CPD noted, with alarm, that live births from mothers aged below 15 had increased.

From 2,411 live births among this age group in 2019, the number rose to 3,343 in 2023.

The data implies abuse. In March 2022, then-president Rodrigo Duterte signed the law raising the age of sexual consent to 16. This means that all births by children aged 15 and below may have been caused by statutory rape (the law has an exemption for consensual and close-aged sexual relations between teens aged 13-15).

According to a presentation by Dr. Juan Antonio Perez III, vice president of the Forum for Family Planning and Development (Forum) and former CPD executive director, only 21 fathers were of similar age to the 3,343 mothers aged 9 to 14 in 2023.

Perez also presented a 2020 matrix of adolescent mothers and the corresponding age groups of the fathers:

Reported cases of rape also do not capture the likely cases of rape being recorded among children having babies. There were 11,479 live births in 2023 among children below 16, the Forum reported citing the PSA. 

But according to the Philippine National Police, there were 9,387 cases of rape reported in 2023. This accounts for all ages, which means that many of the rape incidents that caused the young girls’ pregnancies may have not been reported.

Girls in poorer communities more vulnerable

According to a regression model by the office of Senator Win Gatchalian, the probability of becoming an adolescent mother increases with the level of poverty.

This means that girls in poorer communities are more vulnerable to becoming pregnant at a young age.

Young mothers prone to maternal death

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), adolescent mothers are at higher risks of puerperal endometritis and systemic infections than older women.

Babies born to children themselves are also at higher risk of low birth weight, preterm birth, and severe neonatal condition.

The Forum’s data from 2019 shows over 100 adolescent mothers died that same year.

– Rappler.com