Detrimental Effects of Teenage in the Philippines

Maderazo, Shelah Abigail S.
A42
ORT: Detrimental Effects of Teenage in the Philippines

Teenage pregnancy is one of the major problems in the whole world. Like in other countries, Philippines also suffer this kind of problem. According to survey, teenagers from 15-24 years old are suffering teenage pregnancy. Here in the Philippines, 16.5 million teenagers suffer unwanted pregnancy. Because of this problem according to statistics, every year at least 64,000 teenagers have abortions because of the unwanted pregnancy that they are experiencing. Also according to Statistics, 20 to 25% of mothers are in their teenage years.
There are so many factors why teenagers are suffering from early pregnancy. One of them is premarital sex. Premarital sex is an intercourse between young couples or primarily sex before marriage. Secondly, is the effect of mass media in the lives of the youth. Every day they are bombarded with premarital sex through television, movies, billboards with naked models, indecent magazines, etc. Thirdly, is wrong concept of “love”. For them love is the main base for relationship. This is the reason why many teenagers do this to show and prove their love to their mates. Girls are more affected with this practice because they move and act according to their emotion. Many times, girls do this out of pressure of their boyfriends to show and prove their love to them. Another factor according to studies is peer pressure. Friends are very important to teenagers. They value friendship so much. They want to fit in to their group of friends. Teenagers suffer on wrong concept of virginity. You are not in if you have no experience on sex. Virginity for them is thing of the past. Another factor is lack of sex education from parents, from the church and the school. This is the result of our thinking from the past that sex is dirty and immoral. Lastly is curiosity. Because they are curious, they get involved in it without their parents consent and sometimes lead to multiple sex experience.
There are many detrimental effects of premarital sex in the lives of teenagers One of them is that teenagers will not finish their studies. Instead of attending schools, they are busy taking care of their babies. Secondly, young experience of pregnancy is dangerous for their health. Young pregnancy will lead to many illness and complications among women. Young women that aborted the baby, according to studies are very harmful to our body. Once you experience abortion, there are chances that you will have a hard time on your pregnancy. The hold of the baby in your womb will be weak this can turn to miscarriage. The worst consequence of premarital sex is you might get harmful and deadly diseases such as AIDS and HIV virus that eventually lead to early death. Thirdly, many lives and families suffer because teenagers who became pregnant at young age usually lack of experience on how to raise their own family. Later, what they did, will also do of their children. This is the main reason why there are so many broken and dysfunctional families of today.
Lastly and the worst of all, teen pregnancy will lead to abortion. I say, it is the worst consequence, because abortion is killing lives. One popular case nowadays that we always see and hear in the news is about fetuses are left in churches, in the street, in the garbage and recently in airplane. Teenagers commit abortion, because, they are ashamed what other people will think of them. Many times, they are afraid to their parents.
Seeing all the detrimental effects of teen pregnancy, teenagers should flee from this act. Teenagers should and must avoid premarital sex. Teenagers should think first of their future and the consequence they will face when they will indulge with it. Our government should tackle this sensitive issue with much planning and studying. They should think of ways to prevent teenage pregnancy and even abortion. I do believe sex education should be included in the school curriculum to teach students about premarital sex, teenage pregnancy and its consequences.
To conclude, teen pregnancy usually ruins the lives of many teenagers. Most of them become delinquent, involve to crimes, killing, become liabilities to society, and sometimes lead to early death. We know that mostly the end- result of teenage pregnancy is abortion. Abortion is immoral and illegal here in the Philippines. Since we a Christian country, committing premarital sex is committing mortal sin.