Should teenage pregnancy be the excuse to keep victims out of school? The Member of Parliament for the North Dayi Constituency in the Volta Region of Ghana, Ms Joycelyn Tetteh, does not think so. She has called for measures to integrate victims of teenage pregnancy back into school after delivery.
“Mr. Speaker, every effort to get girls back to school after delivery is as important as the effort made at preventing the pregnancy in the first place,” Ms Tetteh told Parliament on Friday.
Focusing on the increasing spate of teenage pregnancies in her constituency, the first-time lawmaker said the problem is not the pregnant teenager but rather the factors that lead to the pregnancy. “That is why we must focus our energies on addressing those factors rather than isolating pregnant teenagers for condemnation,” she stated.
According to Ms Tetteh, teenage pregnancy is a major cause of maternal mortality in Ghana as the bodies of most teenage girls are not well developed and matured to accommodate a baby, apart from leading them to drop out of school thus leaving them unskilled and unfit for the labour market.
She stressed that, “the double jeopardy of being an unskilled teenager with a responsibility of taking care of the young is what demands that some immediate, relevant, national policy is crafted to halt the worrying trend of teenage pregnancy in North Dayi and beyond”.
As part of the measures to halt the trend, the lawmaker said sex education in basic schools should be taught as a priority and called on parents to be interested in the extracurricular activities of their children, especially teenage ones. “We must begin as a country to teach safer sex practices amongst the youths instead of assuming that our children are ignorant of sex as an act and sexuality as a topic”, the parliamentarian stated.
Ms Tetteh continued, “Condom use must be mentioned while preaching the abstinence we desire as parents and teachers. The effort required to address this social problem of huge significance can only be effective if it is multi-faceted”.
