Sex, sex and more sex
Being pregnant is already a big nightmare. Their world is caving in. They are scared stiff. Some are ready to commit suicide. They need our support, our love and our understanding. Not chiding them, chastising them and forcing them to get married. These marriages won’t last and kids have no right to have kids. Marrying them off to solve a problem is worse than the death sentence.
By Capt. Iskandar Dzulkarnain
Recent articles by Syed Akbar Ali and Mariam Mokhtar on death sentences and child marriages brings us back to a sober and sombre mood. Our country has failed in our social responsibility to protect our young and the unborn.
Recent laws that were passed banning abortions have also aggravated the situation.
Every Religion in the World is against abortion, but Science has argued that unless the unborn foetus reaches a certain maturity, the foetus is still not human. Unless sex education is implemented, this mass suicide will not stop. 99.99 percent of these foetuses will never be found, mostly buried, thrown in the seas or rivers, wells or fed to the dogs. Malaysia must face reality that this situation is not going to stop and will continue to haunt us forever.
Recent remarks by the Malacca CM, but probably taken out of context that these young girls also need sex, is very true. At puberty, most healthy young children experience strong sexual urges. Our reluctance to provide them with Sex Education only makes it worse. Young children will start to experiment among themselves. Most of the time when it happens, they do not go all the way. It is always the stronger sex that imposes their will on the weaker sex, and more at fault are boys and not girls. So when the girl is pregnant, the Nightmare begins.
For Muslims, we pride ourselves that most of our womenfolk are dressed in the baju kurung and the tudung, which discourages showing the flesh. However, this has not deterred Muslims from experimenting. Even if we dress them completely in the burqa (complete from head to toe, and only showing the eyes behind the veil) it will not help either.
These are the same young virile girls that are destined to get married at age 10 because we refuse to accept the fact that this is a frequent social problem. Already we see in adults wife battering and child abuse; are we going to see such incidents in child marriages too? How these laws are passed totally defies the mind. Religious authorities in their haste to contain the problem, has only managed to aggravate it.
Kids must be taught to approach their parents when something bad happens without fear or favour. Parents should consult expert advice on such matters, and not just their local penghulus. If it cannot be kept under wraps, and if parents cannot stand the humiliation of a pregnant child, they should make the ultimate sacrifice for their kids and leave the kampong, to live elsewhere.
Do not subject the kids to a mindless marriage of convenience, and being parents themselves at age 11 totally defies imagination. We are merely sentencing them to a lifetime of despair and despondency. These kids will grow up one day to hate their parents and society. These kids still have a bright future ahead of them, to graduate into teens, young adults, responsible parents and one day growing old gracefully with a sense of pride. Why take that away?
Child Marriages should be shunned. This will be a passport to practise paedophilia legally, and some adults will definitely abuse this law to have child brides legally. So vile is paedophilia that it is shunned worldwide, and is probably the worst of all the sexual sins. Unlike porn, paedophilia is totally banned on the Internet. How can we let it flourish in our backyards?
And with the current situation, we should seriously enforce Sex Education from Primary One. For the others, come September 2010 we should have a syllabus on Sex Education ready to be taught at all levels from Primary to Secondary. Teachers who are too shy or refuse to teach the subjects should seriously review their vocation to be an educationist. Sex is not taboo, War is!! Ever heard of the saying ‘Make Love, not War’? Children do not have to ask their parents who are not qualified to talk about the birds and the bees. If the parents are qualified, why even bother to send the children to school?
Secondly, review Abortion Laws. Everyone wants to be seen as against abortion, but we simply cannot continue tolerating flinging dead foetuses all over the place. There are some desperate enough to try drinking pesticide in the hope that it will kill the foetus inside. Then there is the illegal abortion clinics found in dark alleys, in the slums, unhygienic and blood splattered, with rusty scalpels and dirty tools and charlatan doctors untrained to perform abortions. There should be legal Abortion Clinics that will ensure that legal abortions are allowed to be carried out for the safety of the mother.
Being pregnant is already a big nightmare. Their world is caving in. They are scared stiff. Some are ready to commit suicide. They need our support, our love and our understanding. Not chiding them, chastising them and forcing them to get married. These marriages won’t last and kids have no right to have kids. Marrying them off to solve a problem is worse than the death sentence.
And having the death sentence for killing unborn babies will only brings us back to the Stone Age. But during the Stone Age, I believe however primitive they were, I still think the primitives were more compassionate. It is so unnecessary to have such problems.
If we impose the death sentence on mothers, who were uneducated in Sex, who had no facility to counselling, or the facility to have an abortion, who were raped, or who were in their childlike innocence, curiously experimenting, then we ourselves are Sick to the Core!!
Continuing to shirk off this problem of is not going to make it go away, and if you are reading this, you may already have children or will have them sooner or later. One day it is going to happen to one of our own. Our government is in a position to solve this problem if they stop dragging their feet. And by the time you finish reading this, another 2 more babies would have been born.
