The moral argument must not be naïve in the contraceptive debate

Rwandans will be familiar with the condom debate, whether the contraceptive should be distributed in schools. The debate is far from resolved, but in February the Minister of State in Charge of Primary and Secondary Education announced plans to make sex education compulsory in all schools beginning next academic year. Concerns over whether teenagers should be allowed condoms or not is universal, and in Kenya the debate has been rekindled with a Senate Bill on Reproductive Health Care to introduce contraceptives in schools. As a parent of a daughter whose next birthday will make her a teenager, I will not be understating to say that the bill is of great personal interest to me. But these are the facts. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) 2013 State of the World Population Report, East Africa has been rated second globally after West Africa as the region with the highest number of women reporting a birth before the age of 18. The Report titled, “Motherhood in Childhood”, says that at least five per cent of young women below the age of 18 in East Africa are already mothers while four per cent of girls below the age of 15 have children. Given these statistics, what are the chances any of our daughters below this age will be mothers? The factors that could make them “child-mothers” are many. And in our urban settings will often range from peer pressure amid raging hormonal changes to the programmes they watch on TV, including (God forbid) curiosity fueled by porn on easily accessible Internet, even in our homes. These factors are of great concern, more so in the knowledge that – in addition to the current figures of “child mothers” – a significant number of children in the region are engaging in sex. Many will recall the outrage at the report in these very pages when one school in Eastern Province, Rwanda, reported over 25 pregnancy cases last year. Regionally, according to the UNFPA report, teenage pregnancies are at 33 per cent in Uganda, followed by Tanzania at 28 per cent and Kenya 26 per cent. Faced with such numbers a solution must be found to ensure the safety of our daughters – that, however improbable, they don’t become part of the disturbing statistics. There is a general public agreement that the children should not be left to their own devices, and should receive knowledge from both their parents and schools – which is necessary should either of them lapse – to protect themselves from infection and early pregnancy. The problem is, depending on our own individual or institutional moral inclinations, we are split on what they should be taught. Should it be holistic teenage sex education with easy access to birth control, as the Kenyan bill is proposing? Or, should they be taught abstinence that the only safe sex is no sex; the argument being that teaching anything other than abstinence would be promoting moral decadence? Though sex education is already happening in many instances in Kenya, between these two questions is the crux of the debate, as, indeed, it already is everywhere on the planet in attempting to prevent, if not stem the rate of pre- and teen age pregnancies. But the answer is not so simple. As has been pointed out, the reality is that adolescent pregnancy is most often not the result of a deliberate choice, but rather the absence of choices, and of circumstances beyond a girl’s control. It is a consequence of little or no access to school, employment, quality information and health care. The other reality, however, is that the vast majority of our children are attending school, where it is becoming a matter of policy that they should learn sex education along with parental involvement. While the moral argument must have its place, it should not be naïve, appreciating the reality of the situation and the inherent potential in our daughters and sons, steeped in their right to objective information as they grow to responsible adulthood. The writer is a commentator on local and regional issues