The drama of teenage pregnancy
Latin America and the Caribbean is the region in the world with the second highest rate of teenage pregnancies, surpassed only by sub-Saharan Africa. And in both cases, it's no coincidence.
According to the United Nations Population Fund, more than 1.5 million adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19 give birth each year in the region.
Contributing factors- Disintegration of the family
- Ignorance , poor public and domestic education
- Poverty and social inequality
- Gender violence
- Lack of knowledge of contraceptive methods .
- School dropouts
- Impact on physical, emotional and mental health
- More poverty .
- More sexually transmitted diseases.
- Underdevelopment in all orders.
In the Dominican Republic, teenage pregnancy is not just a health issue, it's a social emergency ; one in five girls between the ages of 12 and 19 has been pregnant at some point, representing one of the highest rates in Latin America, surpassed only by Nicaragua and Honduras.
In 2023, 30% of our women aged 20-24 said they had their first child before turn 18 years old .
This reality occurs in a context of " economic growth " which makes this debt to our girls and boys even more unacceptable.
While significant resources are allocated to education—the famous 4% of GDP—we still fail to see tangible results in key areas such as comprehensive sex education , access to contraception , and values education in our national education system.
These pregnancies are not the result of love, but of abandonment , ignorance , poverty , unhealthiness, and abuse. They are the result of the absence of a solid family structure, the hypersexualized media culture, free pornography, and a passive, indifferent authority that creates fertile ground for this silent tragedy to flourish.
In recent days and weeks, concern has resurfaced , and we're once again talking about the topic. And it could take a century. Because without the sustained, long-term work that true development demands, nothing said or written is of little use.
The reality is that there has not been, nor is there, the political will or civic commitment to do so. And so, the tragedy of pregnancy among our girls will continue to become a growing problem every day, impossible to transform into collective hope.
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