According to a survey released yesterday, the pregnancy rate among junior high school students rose from 0.4 percent in 1996 to 1.4 percent in 2001, and most pregnant teenagers chose to abort the children and terminate their education.
The survey, conducted by the Ching Kuo Institute of Management and Health's Department of Nursing lecturer Li Te-fen (李德芬), under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, found that among junior high school students, the main reason for falling pregnant was bad relations with their parents. The survey further pointed out that other reasons for underage pregnancy out of wedlock were a lack of effective contraception, young women's lack of love and security, seduction by adult boyfriends and insufficient knowledge regarding sex.
Li conducted the poll among counseling tutors in 606 junior high schools. Two-hundred-and-twenty-four tutors said there were cases of pregnancy in their schools, while 237 said there were none, while 99 said they did not know whether there were any and 46 refused to answer the question.
She found that among 340 junior high school students who became pregnant, 156 chose to abort the baby, 93 decided to marry and 73 decided to give birth to the child out of wedlock. The choices of the rest were unknown.
Li released the report during a seminar on pregnancy on campus held by the Garden of Hope Foundation.
The Garden of Hope Foundation discussed a case in which a 24-year-old girl had her first abortion at the age of 16, and then had another 8 until she was 24.
When she became pregnant for the 10th time, the gynecologist warned her against abortion, fearing that she might never be able to carry a child. She then reluctantly decided to have the child.
"Nowadays many young women think abortion is easy. They think a few thousand dollars can give them an abortion, and that taking away a new life within a few minutes is nothing," said Wang Shu-fen (王淑芬), a social worker supervisor at the foundation.
"But they know completely nothing about the harm abortion would do to their bodies, and they ignore the value of a new life," she said.
Li also said that pregnancy usually entailed the end of schooling for students.
In the survey, among 364 pregnant students, 231 dropped out of school, and the reasons included that they were either forced to leave the school, they chose to drop out of school, or taking long-term leave. Only 101 stayed in school, which amounted to less than a third of the total number of pregnant students.
"The reasons that make it difficult for pregnant students to continue schooling include the lack of a proper counseling system at school, and schools' conservative religious beliefs and intolerance of a large-tummied student walking around on campus, which would damage the schools' image," Li said.
The survey also showed that when young women got pregnant, most of the time they would turn to their teachers for advice, but then the teachers would face the decision of whether to tell the parents about the young women's condition.
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