Pregnant at 13, a Mother at 14: The Teen Pregnancy Crisis in the Phillippines

Cradling her breastfeeding baby while sitting in her parents’ tiny home in Navotas, a coastal town Northwest of Manila, 17-year-old Sang* recalls the day she found out she was pregnant at 13 years old. 

“I got so nervous and scared,” the mother of two told More to Her Story. 

For the first grueling five months, she hid her pregnancy from her parents, concealing her growing stomach under oversized t-shirts. Terrified of what others would say, Sang never got a prenatal checkup at the hospital. “People can be judgmental,” she said. 

In the Philippines, a staunchly religious country where almost 80 percent of citizens are Catholic, conversations about sex are still considered taboo. At a young age, many Filipinos are inculcated with religious teachings that often deem premarital sex as morally wrong, with fundamentalists viewing adolescent mothers as immoral. The church has strongly pushed back against the distribution and use of contraceptives and condemned teaching sex education in schools.

By the time Sang was in labor, at 14, she had mistaken her labor pains for a bad case of the stomach flu, having no prior knowledge of reproductive health to guide her understanding of what was happening to her transforming body. 

“I went by myself to a manghihilot,” she said, referring to a traditional massage healer. The healer eventually called Sang’s parents, who rushed her to the nearest hospital. 

“We didn’t know much about her pregnancy. We didn’t even know her due date,” Sang’s mother, Nida*, told More to Her Story.

According to the World Bank, the Philippines has one of the highest adolescent birth rates among ASEAN countries, with pregnancy complications and unsafe abortions among the leading causes of death for young girls globally. Alarming data released in January 2024 by the Philippine Statistics Office revealed the number of births among Filipino girls under the age of 15 went up by over 35 percent between 2021 and 2022. The data suggests that thousands of young girls in the Philippines are also at risk of maternal mortality from pregnancy complications. 

The country’s proposed “Prevention of Adolescent Pregnancy” bill hopes to change this but is facing significant opposition. The bill, which would mandate comprehensive sex education in schools, has faced the staunchest push-back from President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who threatened to veto it in January. In response, the bill's author, Senator Risa Hontiveros, removed some of the more controversial provisions about international standards and minors’ access without parental consent. As of early February, the bill is still up for debate in the Senate. 

But advocates warn that the longer this bill remains inactive, the greater risks Filipino teens will face. Aside from the health risks, numerous studies have found that adolescent pregnancy places many young women at an economic disadvantage, something the World Bank calls ‘intergenerational cycles of poverty.’

“It was sad to see my friends graduate without me because I had to stop school,” said Sang. Realizing the need to earn a living wage for her baby, her partner dropped out of school in 6th grade. Without even a high school diploma, he struggles to find a permanent job. There have been days when he couldn’t find work, and when that happens, they go hungry, she said. 

Experts note that the country’s teen pregnancy problem is rooted in a longstanding and widespread lack of education available to young people. A 2021 University of the Philippines study found that over 40 percent of young females and 39 percent of males aged 15-24 received no sex education, with many turning to social media for information. UNFPA Philippines Representative Leila Joudane warned this could expose youth to inaccurate or misleading information. She noted that the Philippines has the highest unmet need for adolescent family planning in Asia Pacific, attributing this partly to persistent gender inequalities and traditional roles that limit women's autonomy.

The battle for reproductive rights in the Philippines has long been marked by religious resistance and legal hurdles. After 14 years of fierce opposition from the Catholic church — including reported threats to excommunicate then-President Benigno Aquino III — the Reproductive Health Law (RH Law) was finally passed in 2012. The landmark legislation promised universal access to modern contraception, but its implementation stalled for two years as religious groups challenged its constitutionality. While the Supreme Court ultimately upheld the law in 2014, it struck down several provisions, including one that would have allowed adolescents under 18 to access contraceptives without parental consent.

In an interview with More to Her Story, Junice Melgar, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Likhaan Center for Women’s Health, an NGO that has been providing health services to women in marginalized communities, said the implementation of sex education in schools by the Philippine Department of Education (DepEd) after the 2014 ruling has been sparse. According to data from a UNFPA Philippines position paper, as of January 2023, only 3.4 percent of teens aged 15 to 19 who were supposed to receive sex education actually received it.

“There are teachers who are willing to teach [sex education], but they are vulnerable to attacks at the local level,” Melgar said. These include pushbacks from members of religious groups or devout Catholics who would often question the teachers’ morality. 

Melgar believes religious control of the few people who make decisions in government is still the biggest roadblock to sex education’s implementation. The Philippines has a long history of politicians winning elections by attaining endorsements from the church, and Filipinos often turn to religious institutions for political and moral guidance.

“The tandem of poverty and discrimination [caused by factors] that are mainly religious, these are the ones that are putting women in such awful situations that impede their progress,” she said. 

In a statement sent to More to Her Story, the Philippines Department of Education said sex education remains a “priority for the agency” but did not directly address the cause of the delay or the current status of its implementation and did not answer questions about the timeline for its full roll-out. 

More to Her Story reached out to the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines for comment but did not hear back by publication time. 

Reproductive health advocates and activists believe these delays will continue to leave adolescents to navigate their sexual and reproductive health on their own.

Sang, however, remains hopeful that things will change for her children in the future. In the meantime, she has returned to school to “give my children a better life,” she said. “Sana wag sila matulad sa akin (I hope what happened to me won’t happen to them, too),” she added. 

*Some names have been changed to protect the minor source’s identity.