While a little bit of knowledge may be a dangerous thing, when
it comes to teenage sexuality, it can be devastating. As the number
of teen pregnancies rises in China, arguments for lifting the
taboos surrounding sex and educating youngsters are gaining
ground.
Seventeen-year-old Ai Li (not her real name) was four months
pregnant when she decided to have an abortion. The high-school girl
was loath to tell her parents what had happened. "They had never
tried to understand me," she said. "I knew what they would do to
me."
More often than not, pregnant teenage girls in China turn to
"quacks" for help, despite the dangers, to avoid bringing shame on
themselves and their families. This time, however, luck was on Ai
Li's side. An "Emergency Assistance Center for Accidental Teenage
Pregnancy" had just been set up in her home town of Chongqing in
Southwest China. In addition to a successful abortion, she received
counseling from doctors at the center on sex and reproduction and
was given a pack of condoms, all free of charge.
"I had even considered suicide before I went there, fearing that
my parents would beat me," the girl recalled. "But the doctors at
the center persuaded them to forgive me, and they agreed to let me
go ahead with the abortion."
Sad stories
The center, which runs an abortion clinic, opened in
mid-February. As its name suggests, it helps teenage girls such as
Ai Li terminate their unwanted pregnancies and offers them
psychological help as well as medication. The clinic, a non-profit
facility, operates on donations and subsidies from the local
government. "We are adamant about maintaining patient privacy,"
said Zhou Xin, deputy director for the clinic. "Confidentiality is
guaranteed. When a patient comes to us for help, we bring her
parents in and talk things over with them until they consent to
sign an agreement for the proposed abortion. We assure them that
their right to privacy will also be fully respected."
Sex has been a taboo subject in China for well over 2,000 years
from feudal times. But even now, at the dawn of the 21st century,
the era of the "knowledge-driven economy", many Chinese still
regard it as something shameful or dirty to talk about. Most
children get evasive responses or even a scolding for asking such
"embarrassing" questions as "How did I come into this world?" or
"Why do men and women use different toilets?"
However, evading and ignoring the topic will not prevent
discreet sexual encounters from taking place between young people.
Statistics from the hospital affiliated to the Chongqing Family
Planning Research Center indicate that teenage girls accounted for
34 percent of all abortions at the hospital in 2002, up from 13
percent three years ago.
Chinese law requires approval from a parent or guardian before
an abortion may be performed on a girl of 18 or younger. "For fear
of punishment at home and disgrace in society, girls with unwanted
pregnancies tend to go to back-street abortionists, quacks for whom
money is the only concern," said Dr Zhou Xing.
Many girls try to "help" themselves even though they know
virtually nothing about pregnancy. Dr Zhou cited the example of a
13-year-old girl who used a leather strap to bind her belly in
order to conceal her pregnancy. In another example, a boy kicked
his girlfriend in the abdomen to make the fetus "disappear".
"Sad stories like these prompted us to open the clinic," says Dr
Zeng Qinliang, the clinic's director. "These teenage girls have
made a mistake at such a young age. We can't stand to see them sink
further and have the rest of their lives ruined."
Facing the problem
Within a month of opening, the center provided counseling to 300
girls aged 16 or younger and performed abortions on 20 of them. "We
tell them about the dangers of under-age a pregnancy, the harm
abortion does to the human body and explain how to use
contraceptives," says Dr Zeng.
Most parents are usually furious when they first come to the
clinic, and some start beating their daughters immediately. "What
we do is calm them down and help them approach the situation in the
best interests of the girls," the doctor said.
Experts agree that the opening of the clinic shows that China
has begun to face up to the increasingly serious problem of teenage
pregnancy. In the words of Professor Li Yinhe of the Chinese
Academy of Social Science (CASS): "Care for those in need indicates
social progress.
"Society must try to help girls with unwanted pregnancies find a
new lease of life," she insisted. "We have to face the problem as
it is, and on no account must we look down on them."
Some people, however, take the center and its rationale with a
grain of salt, arguing that it might encourage careless and
irresponsible behavior on the part of young Chinese people. In
response to such misgivings, Liu Hong, director of the Chongqing
Family Planning Research Center, had this to say: "The problem of
teenage pregnancy would not be any less thorny even if no such
facilities as the clinic existed."
Liu called attention to the physical and psychological changes
that have taken place in Chinese children in recent decades. As the
standard of living continues to improve, he noted, most Chinese
children now reach puberty at 12 or 13, a full year earlier than
they did in the early 1990s. "It's only natural and understandable
that they should have sexual impulses and be curious about sex,"
Liu said. "If they are not provided with the right information,
they are likely to seek answers from adult websites and porn
videos."
Of the 2,000 high-school students surveyed in 2002 by the
Children and Youth Health Research Center of Peking University, 56
percent said they confided nothing to their parents, and more than
82 percent admitted they had learned about sex from TV programs or
other media. Nearly 49 percent of the students thought there was
nothing wrong with premarital sex, and 10 percent felt that having
sex on a first date was okay. More than 32 percent deemed it
shameful for a high-school student not to have a girlfriend or
boyfriend.
The survey also found that more 34 percent of the students did
not know when a woman was most likely to be impregnated, and 10
percent had no idea how to prevent pregnancy when having sex. About
40 percent did not know gonorrhea was a sexually transmitted
disease.
In the case of Ai Li, ignorance along with the way her parents
treated her should be considered responsible for the girl's
pregnancy. According to Dr Zeng Qinliang, Ai Li's parents only
pressed her to study hard and forbid her to have any contact with
boys. "The girl rebelled by taking a classmate as a boyfriend and
neither of them used contraceptives during sex."
Shortly after the Chongqing clinic began operating, the cities
of Hangzhou and Jinan in East China followed suit. Similar to its
counterpart in Chongqing, the Hangzhou center is open seven days a
week and offers free abortions to pregnant teenage girls. In
addition, girls can get emergency medical help within a week's time
from having had sex without contraceptives.
Prevention is better
Experts hope to see more such facilities established. Meanwhile,
they also advocate sex education in schools, citing the Chinese
proverb "to forestall is better than to amend". As Li Yinhe of CASS
put it, "These clinics, after all, are just a remedy for the
problem of teenage pregnancy, not a solution. We need to provide
our children with a proper sex education."
More and more adults have come to share that view. According to
a survey conducted last year by the former State Family Planning
Commission of 7,000 people between the ages of 15 and 49, 89.2
percent of respondents in cities and 74.6 percent of those in the
countryside agreed that high schools should offer sex education
courses.
"Sex education is not just about physiology, conception,
procreation or puberty," said Professor Lu Zizhi of the Department
of Social Medical Science and Health Education at Peking
University. "It's a tool to enlighten youngsters about sexual
ethics and behavior, gender consciousness, love and marriage."
The country's first textbooks on sex education were published
last year and put to use at primary and secondary schools in
northeast China's Heilongjiang
Province. Last September, students from more than 100 high
schools in Beijing received such textbooks. In April of this year,
the first textbooks specially written for college students became
available.
Textbooks for elementary school kids address gender differences
and the reproductive organs, while those for high school students
focus on sexual mores, the meaning of marriage and the
responsibility involved, how to use condoms and how to prevent
sex-related diseases including HIV/AIDS. Sex-related crimes and
legal protections against such crimes are also included.
In the words of Dr Zeng Qinliang of the Chongqing clinic, sex
education is the "real remedy" to the problem of teenage pregnancy.
"We don't want to see facilities like ours thrive," he said. "We
hope to see fewer and fewer girls come to our clinic for help."
(China Daily September 3, 2003)