Schoolgirl pregnancies

The news that 28 schoolgirls between the ages of 13 and 15 became pregnant during the past scholastic year is rather worrying.

While I am glad to note that such girls are receiving all the help necessary from the Ghozza Unit of the Education Division, I feel that this is a case where prevention is better than cure.

Obviously, this is not an easy problem to solve, far from it. Girls in the higher forms of secondary schools are easy prey to the temptation of "adventures" with the opposite sex. Furthermore, it is a fact that such students are bombarded by the media with the message that "it's cool" to have an active sex life.

How many films does one see where a man meets a woman and the next scene sees them in bed having sex? Unfortunately, schoolgirls are sometimes not yet mature enough to understand the difference between the world of cinema and real life where one pays a very heavy price for one's mistakes.

One problem that can be tackled

The problem of schoolgirls who become pregnant will always be with us because it concerns the weakness of human nature.

However, we can at least try to improve the present situation in Malta. I have written many times about the dangers faced by schoolgirls who walk alone to school and back. I have lived near a Girls' Junior Lyceum for many years now and I have noticed how several girls usually meet much older males when they are at a safe distance away from the school and cannot be seen by members of the administration and the teaching staff.

On many occasions, such girls get into cars with these persons and are driven away, probably to be sexually exploited while their parents are unaware of what is going on behind their backs. I know of cases where Form 1 girls have started such relationships.

Now I am not saying that only such schoolgirls run a heavy risk of becoming pregnant, since it is also a fact that girls go out during the weekend and meet boys at places of entertainment. Still, this particular problem could be better tackled if stricter control of a school's perimeter were to be enforced and parents were to be more careful and alert to possible dangers in the case of their children who walk to school and back.

A case for compassion

Schoolgirls who become pregnant should get all the help they can get from all members of society. I cannot stick such arguments as those based on the premise that a schoolgirl should avoid getting pregnant in the first place and, therefore, she should bear the full consequences of her folly.

Such reasoning is not worthy of citizens of a European Union country. It is also not worthy of anybody professing to be a Catholic.

We adults should start by pointing a finger at ourselves and question how our society has reached a point where children are bombarded with messages that everything is relative, that the best kind of life is the one that panders to consumerism and selfish materialism, that self-gratification should come first and foremost in the aims of one's life.

When one reflects on all this, one realizes what hypocrites are those people who show no compassion towards young and immature persons who have made what is probably the first serious mistake in their lives.