I found the article “Failing the Test: How Tanzanian Schools Deny Pregnant Students Their Education” by Alisha Bjerregaard (Vol. XXXV, No. 1), not just very informative, but also very familiar.

I heard echoes of the same situation—female students being forced out of school when they are found to be pregnant—in my own country, the Philippines. The situation is not as brazen or tainted with a semblance of official policy, as it seems to be in Tanzania and other African countries. But it exists just the same.

Indeed, when a column that I wrote based on the article came out in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a reader commented that the same unofficial policy exists in high schools here, especially in Catholic schools. Although a recent law, the Magna Carta of Women, declares the expulsion of female students (and teachers) who are found to be pregnant out of wedlock to be illegal, it is still frequently practiced in private Catholic schools. And, as in Tanzania and other countries, the boys or men who happen to be the sperm donors are let off the hook, or else only mildly chastised.

While in Tanzania the policy is passed off as a means of reducing the rates of teenage pregnancy, in schools where the policy is in place here, the reasoning is tinged with ultra-Catholic morality, shaming and judgment. The results are the same: thousands of girls are denied further education, rendering them vulnerable to joblessness and early marriages and beginning a cycle of poverty that affects not only the girls but their children as well.

This judgmental and condemning attitude was evident in the debates around the Reproductive Health Law, when Catholic bishops and school administrators protested that their “academic freedom” was being violated when the requirement for age-appropriate sexuality education came up. Even after the law was declared constitutional by the Supreme Court, conservative elements still managed to win exemptions for doctors and hospitals that refused to provide reproductive health information or services under the rubric of conscience clauses. In addition, teens seeking reproductive health services were required to get their parents’ permission before gaining access to such basic healthcare.

In the Philippines as in Tanzania and elsewhere, it is the most vulnerable population—young women—who are bearing the brunt of society’s discomfort with and condemnation of sexuality.

RINA JIMENEZ DAVID
Columnist, Philippine Daily Inquirer
Antipolo City, Philippines