Abortions among unwed, under-19 girls on the rise
Pioneer News Service
Kollam: The number of under-19 unwed girls undergoing abortion is on the rise in Kerala, a study by a specialist doctor says. The study by Dr Sheela Mani, former head of the department of Gynaecology, has found that even girls as young as 13 years were undergoing abortion in the State.
Dr Sheela Mani, who held the study with data collected from unwed women who had approached the medical college hospitals at Kozhikode, Alappuzha and Kottayam over the past one-and-a-half years, said that more than half of them who had carried out feticides were under the age of 19 years. The study was conducted with data collected from women below 24 years.
The doctor, who was now with the Travancore Hospital in Kollam, said her study had covered 151 women. "This number was not even half of the real cases of girls undergoing abortion," she said. She also said that the exact data about abortions were not available in Kerala hospitals. "That is why I had to attempt such a study," she added.
Dr Sheela Mani said that not many cared for the stipulation that feticide must be carried out -- if it was necessary -- within the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. There were proofs of several unregistered abortions should be happening in private hospitals, she said.
As per the findings made by Dr Sheela Mani's study, more than half of the women who had undergone in the past one-and-a-half years in the three medical colleges were under-19, unwed girls. She also found that several under-13 girls had undergone abortion during this period in the medical college hospitals.
Seventy-six per cent of the under-19 unwed girls had to approach the hospitals with this need due to the carelessness of the guardians while 62 per cent were ignorant about sexual matters. There were several cases of such girls who had got into illicit relations due to social and financial problems. Forty-five percent of the subjects under the study said they had gone for the relations due to lack of creative exercises in life.
Dr Sheela Mani had conducted the study by categorising the women into two groups according to their age. She said if the percentage of young girls undergoing abortions in government medical college hospitals the number of such girls approaching private medical facilities could be manifold.
She indicated that carelessness by guardians was an important cause of unwed girls getting into such situations. The best ways to avoid such embarrassments were to keep the warmth of family relations alive and to impart sensible sexual education, she said.
Sociologist Rema Menon said one of the main reasons for such increase in the number of unwed young girls getting pregnant was the absence of immediate guardians, like parents, at home. She said the situation in Kerala on this front was very bad as most mature male members were out of home for years as they were working in other States or abroad.
Rema said the growth in the number of children below 15 or 14 years getting pregnant was a serious cause for worry as this had to be seen in connection with the regularly surfacing stories of sexual abuses of young girls.
She said information about most of such cases was suppressed by the family members themselves fearing shame and loss of pride. This was one of the reasons for the increase in the criminal sexuality in the Kerala society, Rema Menon added.
Source: dailypioneer.com
Date: August 22, 2008 |
