The increase in the rate of teenage pregnancy globally has reached such an alarming point where drastic measures need to be taken in order to stem this rate of growth. Statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO) has it that all across the globe, about 18 million adolescent girls give birth every year most of them from low and middle income countries. Some of the cases in the low and middle income countries are due to cultural factors such as having girls get married and bear children at a very young age. In these low and middle income countries, well over 30% of girls get married before they are 18 years old and about 14% are pressurized into marriage before turning 15 years. The argument presented in this paper will thus not include this category of young girls.
Birth control (or contraception) methods are used to prevent sexual activities resulting in pregnancy. These methods include complete abstinence from sex, which is still the most foolproof method of contraception, the use of condoms (for both males and females), pills taken by the female, Intra Uterine Contraceptive Device (IUCD) used by the female and some other surgical procedures to make either the male or female sterile.
The use of birth control has been perceived in some quarters to increase the promiscuity of teens. I quite agree that this could be a ticket to freedom of engaging in unbridled sexual activities. However, I still strongly believe that the benefits of allowing teens have free and unhindered access to birth control far outweighs the perceived disadvantages. I have my reasons to back my position that teens should have access to birth control.
Furthermore, the general well-being of a teenage girl during pregnancy and after childbirth is compromised owing to the increased tendency of serious medical conditions to arise as a result of childbirth. Vesicovaginal fistula (VVF) is one of such serious consequences of teen childbirth. VVF is a medical condition where a woman has a continuous involuntary discharge of urine. This condition often results from prolonged labour at childbirth. Because of the immaturity of the pelvis of a young pregnant girl, it becomes difficult for the unborn child to be delivered safely. The prolonged labour presses the unborn child against the pelvis and this cuts the flow of blood to the vesicovaginal wall, killing the tissue in the process. This condition can also ultimately lead to the death of the teenage mother. According to the WHO, the leading causes of death among girls between the ages of 15 and 19 years in many low-income and middle-income countries arise from complications from pregnancy and childbirth.
In the event that a pregnant teenage girl chooses to have the baby resulting from the pregnancy instead of aborting the pregnancy, and she safely delivers the baby without any complications to the health and well-being of the mother, there are still attendant problems that will arise from the pregnancy. One is the fact that the new born infants of adolescent mothers are very prone to having low birth weight which will eventually negatively affect their health and development. The initiation of breastfeeding which is considered the best nourishment a baby can receive is observed in less than half of the mothers of babies in a study involving 9,500 mothers in the United Kingdom. This further contributes to a negative impact on the well-being of the baby.
Also, the social consequences of teen pregnancy and eventually childbirth are grave. The education of most teen parents is truncated. The teens by their inability to meet up with the challenges and responsibilities of parenthood become frustrated and in the long run get no meaning out of life. This is simply as a result of the fact that they are not equipped mentally, emotionally, socially and also financially to shoulder the demands of being parents. In cases where the child(ren) that result from the pregnancy are not given up for adoption, they are often left in the care of their grandparents. This is a good breeding ground for disunity in the family and constitutes a menace to the society at large.
Considering these attendant problems associated with teenage pregnancy, I think the best way out is to avoid them in its entirety. The way out of course is to prevent the occurrence of teen pregnancy altogether. In a survey carried out in the United Kingdom among a sample of 700 young people and 600 parents, 68% of young people and 67% of parents felt that having a baby under the age of 18 years is 'just about one of the worst things that could happen to a young person'. This further reinforces my view on the need to avoid teenage pregnancy in order to save young people the experience of ‘worse things’.
Easy and unrestricted access to birth control methods will thus ensure that young people that cannot abstain and must engage in sexual activities do so within the ambit of safety that will not result in pregnancy.
REFERENCES
Adolescent pregnancy. World Health Organisation. Accessed on 01 December, 2013 from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs364/en/
Dennison, C. (2004). Teenage Pregnancy: An Overview of the Research Evidence. Health Development Agency, ISBN 1-84279-260-1.
Hamlyn, B., Brooker, S., Oleinikova, K. and Wands, S. (2002). Infant feeding 2000. London: TSO. www.dh.gov.uk/assetRoot/04/02/39/44/04023944.pdf
