By Ruth Abbey Gita-Carlos

MANILA – The Marcos administration would take appropriate actions to address the increasing cases of teenage pregnancies in the country, Malacañang said Friday.
“The government will do its part, whatever it entails na maibsan natin ‘yung (to lessen the) increasing rates of teenage pregnancies,” Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin told reporters in Pasay City, when asked to react to the alarming trend in adolescent pregnancies.
“Kulang ang education or pabaya ‘yung mga teenage na mothers (There is a lack of education or teenage mothers are negligent). That is a very serious problem. There are multi-faceted concerns diyan, (there).”
According to the Philippine Statistics Authority’s data, live births among girls aged 10 to 14 rose by 6.6 percent from 2,411 in 2019 to 3,343 in 2023.
Thirty-eight girls under 15 experienced multiple pregnancies in 2023, and 17 women under 20 had given birth five or more times.
Bersamin issued the statement, as he welcomed Senator Risa Hontiveros’ move to file a substitute bill for Senate Bill (SB) 1979 or the proposed Prevention of Adolescent Pregnancy Act following concerns over its provisions and the withdrawal of support from at least seven senators.
Hontiveros on Wednesday filed a substitute measure for SB 1979, mandating the implementation of the Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) Program.
Marcos earlier said he would immediately veto SB 1979, if “passed in that form,” because of its “ridiculous” and “abhorrent” provisions which remove parental consent from the CSE and teach children as young as four years old how to masturbate.
Section 6 of the original bill makes the CSE a compulsory part of the education, integrating it “at all levels with the end goal of normalizing discussions about adolescent sexuality and reproductive health and to remove stigma at all levels.”
It also requires the standardization and implementation of CSE in all public and private basic education institutions, integrating the program into the school curriculum, guided by the Department of Education and international standards.
The new version of SB 1979 removes the phrase “guided by international standards” and stresses that the CSE Program should include “comprehensive, age- and developmentally-appropriate information affecting the reproductive health and sexuality of adolescents.”
Marcos on Thursday said he would first read the substitute bill before reconsidering the proposal seeking the implementation of the CSE Program.
Bersamin said Marcos has no opinion yet, until he is done reading the new version of the measure.
“She (Hontiveros) finally realized that there was something objectionable to this earlier version, to her earlier version. But we are not judging her version at all. And let’s be fair to the President. You do not expect him to react kung hindi pa nya nabasa yung bagong version (if he has not read the new version yet),” he said.
“There will be another, a substitute bill that will be submitted. The language of that, the text of that is not yet in our cognizance. So, it is unfair to expect the President to comment on something we cannot establish yet.” (PNA)