THE CHILD Rights Network and the Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population and Development called on the Senate and House of Representatives to swiftly pass three bills that can address the sexual abuse aspect of adolescent pregnancy.

“We call on Congress to make these three bills part of the legislative priority list and ensure that soon, the tides will turn, with the end view of seeing an immediate future where Filipino children are not having children,” the groups said.

The Commission on Population said recently that the rising incidents of teenage pregnancy can be considered a national emergency.

This is based on the results of the latest Social Weather Stations poll on Women Concerns and Family Planning which revealed that nearly 60 percent of Filipinos think that teenage pregnancy is the most important problem of Filipino women.

The latest figures from the Philippine Statistics Authority back these claims. The agency said that 62,510 children gave birth in 2019. In 2019, seven girls aged 10-14 years give birth each day, totaling 2,411 births for the whole year.

Three bills that could address these problems are pending in Congress. These bills are the Anti-Child Rape bill, the Prohibition of Child Marriage bill and the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention bill.

On December 1, the House of Representatives approved on third and final reading House Bill 7836 which provides for stronger protection against rape, sexual exploitation and abuse and increasing the age for determining the commission of statutory rape from below 12 to below 16 years. The landmark legislation contains potent provisions which include equalizing the protection for victims of rape irrespective of gender and the removal of marriage as forgiveness exemption where the perpetrator gets off the hook if the perpetrator marries the victim.

The Senate is yet to pass a counterpart bill.

The Senate has passed on third and final reading Senate Bill 1373 or the Prohibition of Child Marriage Bill, which aims to provide equal protection for all children by declaring the facilitation of child marriage as illegal and punishable by law nationwide.

The bill introduces socioeconomic and culture-sensitive programs that aims toncreate an enabling environment that can help foster protection for girls against child marriage.