You Cannot Use Bare Hands to Hide a Pregnancy
- Category: Education
- Date 13-09-2009
- 415 views
Last Sunday, we discussed the reasons for rampant abortions in Bongo, including the girls’ vacant desire to show their parents, future husbands, and the general public that they have never ‘misbehaved’. This is in addition to people’s failure to identify an unborn baby as a true personality and the dishonour that an ‘illegitimate’ pregnancy attracts.
Before the ink could dry, the ministry of education and vocational training announced one of the most radical policy proposals: to allow girls who become pregnant to resume school after they have delivered their babies. (See: “Change of policy on schoolgirl pregnancies?” The Guardian, 8th September 2009).
Bongo might be the only nation on this continent to consider instituting such a peculiar educational policy. For some people, this is a troublesome policy. The government might have to recruit midwives and construct maternity wards and antenatal centres in schools to meet the requisite demands of pregnant pupils. Others think that the policy is an indication to the pupils that premarital sex (even if it is defilement) is not a bad idea and should go unpunished. It will certainly strain the school systems and families in trying to strike a balance between enforcing sexual controls among their children and protecting their educational rights.
To a good extent, however, the flattering policy cannot merely increase cases of childhood pregnancies. It might simply enable the public to recognise the scale of sexual abuse meted on school-going girls, something the current policy has concealed. It can also sort the existing fallacy that harassing the pregnant girls deters others from rash sexual adventures. One can argue that you (reading this) are not a thief because most thieves get tortured whenever they are caught stealing. What a wrong logic!
Very many young girls get pregnant everyday but few are caught. Those that are not caught often commit an additional crime: abortion. The pregnant girls we see are only a few of the very many child-mothers in Bongo and Africa, where early pregnancies are deeply detested. The standard practice is to kick them out of school. Yet every girl should study and attain the necessary age to start a family and beget a child.
A father of two girls, The Comrade thinks that when a young girl becomes pregnant, she should not be denied education. Education is a basic right and a child does not lose that right when she becomes pregnant. Whereas children should be counselled to abstain from sex till marriage, by avoiding the dangers of early sex and pregnancy, government, society and individual parents must still care for victims of sexual exploitation.
Most girls become pregnant through circumstances over which they have little or no control. Society should think about how to send one more girl to school, how to keep another there, and never to dismiss any from it. Every school dropout is not a relief but an additional burden to society.
From the gender perspective, society tends to ignore or forgive the men who impregnate girls, whether through rape or manipulation but the girls pay the ultimate price. Girls do not impregnate themselves but because they bear the evidence of the act they are punished. A radical feminist once argued that even the boy should be forced to drop out of school for tainting a schoolmate’s tummy, though this again is to add insult to injury. Indeed, government will need prayers to ably identify the men responsible for school girls’ pregnancies in order to punish them. Whatever happens, the current penalty regime is so irrational and pretentious; it is reminiscent of the proverbial woman who tried to hide her bulging belly with bare hands.
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: The Comrade, The Guardian on Sunday