Get Inspired, Be Empowered Forums Access to Healthcare Reproductive Health & Rights Does our country have an effective system in place to address teenage pregnancies? Reply To: Does our country have an effective system in place to address teenage pregnancies?

Manpreet Singh
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Of recently, India has been successful in reduceding the proportion of pregnancy between 15-19 years to half. Still, the estimation by UNFPA runs to 11.8 million teenage pregnancy in our country. Earrly marriage is the biggest cause for the problem of teenage pregnancies im our country. It inevitably put the adolescent girls at the risk of being pregnant. The low contraceptive awareness also makes the problem more graver and serious. High fertility and discontinued education after marriage remain the other concern. but the greatest threat of teenage pregnancy is higher rate of pregnancy-related complications, which leads to high mortality.
Through mass awareness and legislation, India has tried to mitigate the burden of early marriage somehow. But the age old patriarchal setup in our society along with the cultural influences have been a major impediments. In addition, adolescent girls are being introduced to basic knowledge of menstrual health as a sincere effort to come out of social taboos. Even then, their families are not in favour of practicing what the girls were taught, suggesting that mere training/ knowledge cannot bring about changes in social perception in the country.3 With the introduction of peer educators, India is expecting to bridge this gap and addressing a sensitive social and medical issue like teenage pregnancy.
Policies and programs to delay marriage can potentially help break the intergenerational cycle of undernutrition through many routes. “Unfortunately, in India, early marriage and subsequent pregnancy is often not a deliberate choice, but rather the result of an absence of choices, and of circumstances beyond a girl’s control,” says IFPRI Senior Research Fellow and study co-author, Purnima Menon. Indeed, the Teenage Girls Survey 2018 (TAG Survey) by Naandi Foundation, a direct conversation with girls across India, shows that 73.3 percent of teenage girls want to marry only after the age of 21, which is a heartening news, but also highlights the mismatch between their aspirations and the reality of early marriage. “Continuing schooling, exploring employment opportunities, and delaying marriage and pregnancy are challenges for India’s girls that are reinforced through patriarchy and social norms.”