Teen pregnancies rise in Cordillera

BAGUIO CITY—The number of teen pregnancies in the Cordillera when the country began its yearlong home restriction for minors has nearly doubled, records from the region’s Commission on Population (Popcom) showed.

While there were fewer number of babies born in the region on the year the coronavirus triggered a worldwide pandemic, the number of young women who got pregnant rose to over 2,000, or twice as much as the figure recorded in the region in 2019, according to data released by Magdalena Abellera, director of Popcom in Cordillera, during a March 30 forum here.

Abellera said their records showed that 26,312 babies were born in the region in 2020, lower than the 30,437 newborns in 2019.

Abellera cited data based on babies born in health facilities.

But 2,422 of these babies across Baguio, and the provinces of Benguet, Ifugao, Mountain Province, Abra, Kalinga and Apayao, have teenage parents. This reflected an increase in teenage pregnancies by 46.43 percent last year compared to 2019, Abellera said.

Twenty of the new mothers were in the 10-to-14-year-old age group, an age bracket that has been restricted to their homes over the last year.

In 2019, when 1,654 babies were born to teenage parents, 21 of the teen mothers were in the same age bracket.

“This is significant because the Cordillera used to have the highest rate of unplanned teenage pregnancies in the country back in 2014,” Abellera said.

She said records in 2019 were an improvement because teenage mothers gave birth to 3,025 babies in 2018.

“What effect does pregnancy have on a teenager? These children should be in school, not raising a child. They are not prepared,” Abellera said.

She added: “Minors with no decisiveness, no [impulse] control, no [sense of] responsibility were prone to abuse (during the quarantine).

Older partners

While Popcom did not directly state the sexual exploitation of some female minors, Abellera revealed that “one information we have gathered about some teen mothers is that their partners are older, sometimes 10 to 15 years older.”

The youngest parent on record last year was an 11-year-old girl from Baguio. In Benguet, a 12-year-old girl was their youngest mother in 2020.

The Popcom data did not provide details about the circumstances behind the Cordillera’s child parents, which were also detected in Ifugao and Abra.

But the Department of Social Welfare and Development has been monitoring reports of domestic abuse since last year.

Abellera said 254 cases of gender-based violence were recorded last year in the Cordillera when everyone was told to stay at home.

Lockdown pressure

She said the pandemic brought about economic disarray for many highland couples.

“When they become hungry and impoverished, that’s when couples clash. Pressures set in [with women becoming victims],” Abellera said.

Of the household crisis reported, 14 percent involved sexual violence, 11 percent representing physical violence, and 7 percent emotional abuse.

The regional data accounted for babies born in health facilities, and the numbers could still rise when consolidated with civil registry figures, Abellera said.

The data did not also reflect the other risks faced by the new parents under the pandemic.

According to the Cordillera’s demographic vulnerability profile last year, 101,463 households (composed of five or more people) live in tight structures measuring 20 square meters. INQ