COMMENT: Minors need not have access to contraceptives

A local civic body, Advocacy Core Team (Act) recently came up with a petition that has proved deeply controversial.

Act approached Parliament with the petition for the House to consider and pass a law providing for reproductive health services for adolescents and people as young as 12 years.

The group wants Parliament to amend the Public Health Act of 2018 to confer the right for young people and adolescents to access reproductive health services including HIV testing, pre and post counselling, access to contraceptives and other pregnancy prevention and management tools for adolescents and young people.

If amended as suggested, the law would also allow children below 18 to seek health services alone without a guardian or parent. This would be a departure from the current practice under which people younger than 18 can only access medical treatment when accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Acting on the basis of the petition, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health and Child Care and the Senate Thematic Committee on HIV and Aids are conducting public hearings across the country.

We have no problems with some elements of the petition, but are profoundly disturbed by the proposal to allow 12-18 year olds to walk into a hospital or pharmacy to seek or buy condoms, contraceptive pills and other devices or treatments to prevent pregnancy.

How can that really happen in a society like ours? For a Grade Seven girl to legitimately get the loop or jadel on? For a Grade Seven boy to legitimately walk into a clinic or pharmacy to pick up a packet of condoms? It is worrying that we indeed had some people sitting down to draft a petition whose major element is to seek Parliament’s indulgence on sexual and reproductive “rights” for minors. The relevant parliamentary committees have already been to Victoria Falls, Gweru, Gwanda and other places. A clear majority of people attending the hearings have roundly rejected the contraceptive idea.

“Youngsters should be taught total abstinence and not be encouraged to engage in sexual activities,” said Pastor Lovemore Dube of Gwanda.

“What this petition is suggesting is not in line with our ethics and culture as a nation. We would have lost ubuntu/hunhu if we say a child as young as 12 years should be given contraceptives. In some way we will be encouraging them to engage in sexual activities at such a tender age.”

Ms Alice Masawi, also of Gwanda said:

“If we accept what this petition is saying then we will be encouraging our children to be wayward. As a parent I wouldn’t allow my child as young as 12 years old to be inserted a loop or jadel or to be given condoms. This will only cause problems for us as parents in our homes and we will fail to control these children.”

This is the message that will go to Parliament and should see the House dropping Act’s proposal on contraceptives.

The suggestion is extremely dangerous to the very foundations on which our society is built. If approved, youths would take it, and rightly so, as a licence to engage in sex and related deviant behaviour.

In addition to what they say is the need to enable kids to enjoy their “rights” by allowing them condoms, jadel and so on, supporters of the petition say children are engaging in sex already. This, they say, is resulting in unintended teenage pregnancies, unsafe abortions and so on. Giving minors condoms, jadel and so on will help prevent the pregnancies and unsafe abortions, they say.

Yes, the foregoing can be true but will it make sense to say that since some people are smoking mbanje and taking other hard drugs which is illegal then we must entertain a petition seeking to legalise consumption of mbanje and other narcotics? Or will it make sense to say that since some kids under the age of 16 years are driving cars without licences, we must entertain a petition seeking to allow 12-16 year olds to secure licences?

We support the current position that says children cannot consent to sex, encourage them to abstain from it and not allow them legal access to condoms and other contraceptives. Yes, some adolescents are indulging as Act argues, and possibly using condoms, but let that be their own naughtiness, not to have Parliament expressly permitting 12 year olds to freely engage in sex with the liberty to condomise and for girls, no fear of falling pregnant.