Teen Pregnancy Bill Stalls Again in Philippines

Catholic Church-affiliated group says no

Since 2016, Sen. Risa Hontiveros, an opposition lawmaker and health and women's rights advocate, has been attempting to push a bill through the Philippine legislature to help prevent teen pregnancies. a scourge that has resulted in one of the highest teen pregnancy incidences in Asia, with the birth rate to girls aged as young as 10–14 reaching 40.3 per 1,000 – an apparent side effect of the 18-month Covid-19-inspired closure of 50,000 public schools. Apparently with no school to occupy them, the number of pregnant girls jumped by 8.4 percent from 2016, when the rate was 37.2 per 1,000, although sexual abuse of the young was also responsible for the jump. There were 2,114 births among girls as young as 10-14 years old last year, and 26,099 repeat pregnancies from adolescent daughters.

This year, Hontiveros got the bill, known as the Prevention of Pregnancy Act of 2025, as far as the second reading in the Senate before the 24-member body recessed until June to prepare for congressional elections. Following the recess, the legislature is to return for just a month before its term ends, with the intervening time likely to be taking up with the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte. Hontiveros’s bill is likely dead again for another year. A proposed companion version of the measure was approved by the lower chamber of Congress in 2023, and later transmitted to the Senate, which failed to get its version in shape for a conference committee to iron out differences…