Teenage Pregnancy
Naledi Phalatsi
Name: Naledi Phalatsi
Province: North West
District: Bojanala
Local Municipality: Rustenburg
Township: Ikemeleng
Date: 18 September 2024
Teenage Pregnancy
Teenage pregnancy is one of the biggest problems in the community of Kroondal. Most young girls are getting pregnant while they are still attending school and that causes them to drop out to look after their newborn babies.
Pregnancy at an early age can make your plans stop. When I interviewed Miss Silvia Maleka who is a nurse she said “Teenage pregnancy is caused by not knowing sexual activities and also peer pressure that most young girls are facing, especially when they have older friends who influence them to be sexually active.
We have programs that we do around schools teaching young girls and boys about pregnancy, but parents also need to talk to their kids about these things because when a girl is 12 years old, a lot of things start to happen on the streets or at school”. “Life orientation educators are the only ones who try to teach learners about teenage pregnancy issues, but some of them don’t get to details as they think high school learners are young. I believe lack of teaching teenagers about sexual activities and how to protect themselves from getting pregnant causes unwanted pregnancies” she continued.
She concluded by saying “Consequences of getting pregnant during the teenage years, is that we see that young girls end up having complications during the pregnancy or childbirth and it is due to lack of access to comprehensive sex education”.
Sometimes pregnancy can come when you are sexually abused by someone older than you. Girls take dangerous pills to try to abort the pregnancy which is not safe for them or the unborn babies, pills are not safe especially if you just buy them on the black market, and these people claim that they are doctors on social media platforms. The clinics and hospitals are safe because the people went to medical school, and they know how to treat people with any problem.
Young girls must learn to go to the clinic for pregnancy prevention and health care education at all times. Nurses should go on school educational tours to teach learners how to protect themselves from getting involved in sexual activities at a young age and start focusing on their books.
