FAMILY planning experts are concerned about the increasing number of teenage mothers. In the past four months, 13 teenagers gave birth and a further 20 are set to deliver between now and the end of September.
Last year, 29 teenagers became mums - four fewer than 2007.
Family Planning Clinic manager Sue Le Page said the increase was a worry, considering the number of contraception methods available.
‘There are a tremendous amount of questions to be asked in our society. These girls are terribly young,’ she said.
‘It’s quite worrying that they are having them at such a young age. You have to wonder how much support they are getting, from family and the boy - if he is still around.
‘The rise could be down to a number of reasons - girls wanting to be early mums, or maybe they thought it was a way out of school and not having to do exams - but you can’t really tell without talking to them.’
A UK report found that one in 50 girls under 16 falls pregnant.
‘What is alarming is, of women who had abortions last year, 93% did not access the morning-after pill, which is very worrying when everything on the market is available to them.
‘The kids are getting marvellous sex education in the schools, so are they getting pregnant to avoid education? Because they need to be educated to be good mums?
‘We used to be having babies much older compared to the UK, but that trend definitely seems to be changing.’
Director of public health Dr David Jeffs admitted the number was higher than 2006, but added that it was difficult to identify a growing trend over just one year.
‘We have found that teenage pregnancies make up between 4.5 and 5.5 per cent of total births each year. The figures may well be up a bit, but it is very difficult to identify a trend in terms of statistics.
‘One mistake people make is they forget that when dealing with smaller numbers in terms of population, there is greater room for error. So we prefer to work in five-year averages.
‘A single year may be interesting, but it doesn’t prove anything.’
He said the number of teenage pregnancies was far fewer than the UK.
‘The number of teenage pregnancies is two-thirds the size of the UK.
‘The conception rate for 15- to 18-year-olds in Guernsey between 1999 and 2003 was 20.7 per 1,000, whereas in the UK it was 44.7 per 1,000.’
There were 3,108 conceptions between 1969 and 2003: of those, 67 women were under 18 and 36 pregnancies resulted in abortion.
Article posted on 26th April, 2007 - 12.00am
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