File picture of Kenyan children calling for the end to teenage pregnancies.
CLAIM: Nearly 80% of teenage pregnancies fall within the 18-19 years age group.
Source: Expert opinion in The Sunday Mail.
RATING: MOSTLY TRUE. Official data shows that the vast majority of teenage pregnancies fall in the 18-19 age group, which is above Zimbabwe’s age of majority. A detailed breakdown of the data in the 2015 Zimbabwe Demographic Health Survey, the latest available, shows that 68%, and not nearly 80%, of all teenage pregnancies fall within this age group.
Background:
Zimbabwe’s teenage pregnancy rate of about 22% places the country in position 28 out of 54, with number 1 being the worst, on UNICEF’s early childbearing list. As part of efforts to reduce teenage pregnancies, rights groups are pushing for access to sexual and reproductive health services for adolescents and young women.
Sexual health advocacy groups have made a petition to Parliament calling for the removal of the age of consent to access sexual reproductive health services.
This drive has drawn mixed reactions, including by medical professionals.
In an article carried by the Sunday Mail newspaper on 12 November 2020, Dr DavidzoyaShe Makosa, an obstetrician and gynaecologist who is a former Deputy Director of Reproductive Health Services in the Ministry of Health and Child Care, argues against the petition.
In the article Dr, Makosa agues:
“The majority of the 22% that is being flagged in the petition to parliament were 18- and 19-year olds, accounting for nearly 80% of teenage mothers.”
Currently, in terms of Zimbabwe’s public health law, minors (persons under the age of 18), can only access health services with the consent of a parent or legal guardian.
Some lawmakers, including the chairperson of Parliament’s health portfolio committee, Dr Ruth Labode, have argued that access to reproductive health services should be lowered to 16 year olds, since that is also the country’s age of sexual consent.
“The issue is about minors’ access to health. Our proposal…was that, since we’re pushing the age of consent to 18, we need a provision for 16 year olds who, in terms of the current law, can consent to sex, to be able to access health services even without their parents,” Labode told ZimFact last year. “Because a 16-year-old is a minor, she cannot, for instance, get contraceptives or get STI treatment without her parents.”
Teenage pregnancy rate:
The Zimbabwe Demographic Health Survey report for 2015 shows a national teenage pregnancy rate of 21.6%, while the Ministry of Health and Child Care’s 2016 Zimbabwe National Adolescent Fertility Study states that “almost a quarter of women aged 15-19 years (24%) have started childbearing, i.e. have had a live birth or were pregnant with first child, increasing from 21% in 1999.”
Proponents of the removal of age restrictions on access to reproductive health services cite this statistic, among others, as evidence of the need to extend access to persons under the legal age of majority, which is 18 years in Zimbabwe.
Counter-argument:
In her argument, Dr Makosa says the majority of adolescent pregnancies occur in the 18-19 year age group. Her assertion that these make up nearly 80% of total teenage pregnancies seems to be due to a statistical error in interpreting the data carried in the 2015 Zimbabwe Demographic Health Survey report.
Analysis of the figures shows that 68%, and not nearly 80%, of all teenage pregnancies fall in the 18-19 age bracket. From the total 2,199 women in the 15-19 age group who took part in the survey, 475 had begun childbearing, resulting in the 21.6% teenage pregnancy statistic. From that number, 323 were aged between 18 and 19, accounting for 68% of total teen pregnancies.
The Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency’s Multiple Indicator Cluster 2019 Survey, which found that the percentage of women with a live birth before the age of 18 was 22.8%, also backs up the assertion that most teenage pregnancies occur within this demographic.
CONCLUSION:
It is true that the majority of teenage pregnancies fall within the 18-19 age group, although, based on the cited data, the prevalence is not as high as 80%.
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