Although condoms and the morning-after pill are available in many places, Thailand has the second highest teenage pregnancy rate in Southeast Asia. Last year, teenagers aged 15 to 19 gave birth to 370 babies on average per day. Ten of those teenage mothers were under the age of 15.
Reasons for this high number are given as girls' inability to urge their partners to have safe sex and the widespread belief that you won't get pregnant if you do it once.
"The main problem is not the lack of access to resources, but the lack of knowledge, both about the need to have protected sex and about the pills themselves," says activist Nattaya Boonpakdee. “What girls know is what they hear from their friends. Many do not even realize that you can contract HIV and AIDS from unprotected sex. They also know nothing about the use of the morning-after pill, the dosage and possible side effects.'
Another problem is that child or teenage pregnancy is often the result of abuse and violence. The girls are afraid of being punished and stigmatized and do not dare to go to the drugstore to buy contraceptives.
The Ministry of Education is not cooperating either, because the subject of the morning-after pill is not included in the sexual education curriculum. That would only lead to promiscuity, is the thought. The Ministry of Health has still not formed a platform to support teenage girls to prevent unprotected sex and reduce the number of abortions.
In the meantime, boys are bombarded with images that it's okay for them to be sexually active and irresponsible.
"It's clear," writes Sanitsuda Ekachai in her weekly column Bangkok Post. “To save our girls from sexual exploitation, our cultural values and double sexual morality must change. The prejudice that pregnant teenagers are 'bad girls' who deserve to be punished must disappear.'
(Source: bangkok mail, April 10, 2013)
See also the post: https://www.thailandblog.nl/achtergrond/tieners-leren-workshop-seks-en-relaties/
Always thought that the parents are primarily responsible for the education of their children. My children (half Thai) know very well from the age of 10-11 how not to get pregnant. If Thai parents have a problem with that (and some do) then they are out of luck and I can only hope for them that their children will not experiment too much, because children come from when you know nothing.
The highest teenage pregnancy rate in Southeast Asia will undoubtedly be in the Philippines. In that country you cannot buy the morning after pill and a condom is seen as something strange.
The fact that the powers that be at the Ministry of Education do not want to see the morning after pill in the curriculum, once again indicates that those people are still hobbling around in a kind of jurassic park, completely cut off from everyday reality.
This is the other side of Thailand that we Westerners don't understand and can't appreciate. It's the double standard in so many things. Also think of abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, etc…. It is incomprehensible that in such a tolerant society, true tolerance is still a long way off.
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What really surprises me in the article is that it says “In the meantime, boys are bombarded with images that it is okay for them to be sexually active and irresponsible”. What should I think about that? To be honest, I've never heard of that.