The Mother and Child Project by Hope Through Healing Hands

Author:Hope Through Healing Hands
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2015-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Reaching Adolescents,

Including Married Adolescents

Reaching adolescent girls with family planning information, especially married adolescents, remains extremely difficult. In the Amhara region, where the DHS found that almost 34 percent of girls age twenty to twenty-four had been married by the age of fifteen, I met many girls who had been married at ages twelve, thirteen, or fourteen and who were thirteen or fourteen at their first pregnancy. These girls described the barriers they faced in accessing family planning: husbands who refused to allow it, which left them no choice but to seek services secretly; mothers-in-law who found their pills and threw them out; and families and communities that saw no value in allowing them to stay in school.

These girls understood the possible health consequences of giving birth at such a young age. Sitting under a tree, a girl wrapped in a black scarf told me that she was fourteen when she experienced a prolonged and difficult labor: “I was not ready to give birth. My bones were not ready to give birth.” Another girl told me about her friend who had been married at twelve and died in childbirth, and others described cases of fistula, resulting from giving birth at such a young age.

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