The UNFPA has a new program called Action for Adolescent Girls which promises to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of adolescent women around the globe. However, the program outline of Action for Adolescent Girls does nothing to protect the dignity of young women. In fact, this program will likely do more harm than good to human dignity and female health because it incentivizes sexual intercourse among children.
First of all, the program sets forth the following major goals:
1. Preventing “child marriage” and “adolescent pregnancy”
2. Increasing access and demand for family planning and contraception
While the first goal protects the health, safety, and well-being of the adolescents it is almost entirely undermined by the second goal. How can this be the case? The answer is a matter of incentives as well as principles. The second goal still incentivizes adolescent girls to become sexually active before the age of majority because it makes sexual intercourse less “risky” for adolescents. Below the age of majority a child is not considered mature enough to consent to simple contracts. According to the UNFPA that same child is mature enough to consent to intimate relations involving their very body. While the marriage between a man and an adolescent girl would be banned sexual relations between the two parties would go unaddressed. Does this protect the innocence and dignity of a child, or are we to say a child is not an innocent and is fully capable of choice? If the latter is true then why are child marriage and adolescent pregnancy wrong? The answer is that by the UNFPA’s own logic their first goal makes no sense in relation to the second. This is the problem with justifying an ideological stance with merely consequentialist arguments: we fail to see the consequences of our own beliefs.
The questions we must ask ourselves are not only whether or not children should be married and having children (we all agree this is wrong) but whether we should incentivize children to have sex. Here is where goal number two fails to protect the dignity of the child. Child marriage for the sole purpose of childbearing deprives both the child and the institution of marriage of its dignity. To promote contraception and family planning among adolescent girls turns them from objects of reproduction to objects of sexual pleasure.
Contraception and family planning for adolescents fail to deal with the practical issue of sexually active children as well. An article on adolescent health by the Heritage Foundation cites data from a longitudinal study linking depression to sexual activity in adolescent girls. These findings are corroborated by a more recent study conducted by the NIH that also found sexual activity in adolescents to be linked to increased incidence of depression. Although the WHO admits that “Depression is the top cause of illness and disability among adolescents and suicide is the third cause of death” it is not addressed by the UNFPA. Clearly, Action for Adolescent Girls fails to deal with the sexual exploitation of girls in a holistic manner.
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