This year’s theme speaks loudly to us: “No Barriers, Just Choices: Contraceptive Access Now.”

In the last four years, we have had a quiet period of research and advocacy about the constitutionality of our abortion law. We recently won an identical challenge in Dominica, so we await this decision with measured optimism.

The idea of World Contraception Day (WCD) is to remind us of the importance of access to reliable contraceptives – to spread scientific information about contraceptives and to address the mischief of misinformation about them.

WCD serves a simple purpose: to inform the public about the different groups of contraceptives – like (a) Barrier methods (condoms and diaphragms); (b) Hormonal Methods (pills and injections); (c) Long-acting reversible contraceptives (IUDs and implants); (d) Permanent methods (vasectomy and tubal ligation); and (e) Emergency contraception which can prevent pregnancy up to 72 and even 120 hours after sex.

Why is improving contraception important? Because the main driver of abortions is unintended pregnancy. Improve contraceptive usage and we have fewer unplanned pregnancies and fewer abortions. Our real challenge is unplanned pregnancy, not abortion.

Across the Caribbean, among women attending public health clinics, 80% reported that their last pregnancies were unplanned. Nearly 40% of those pregnancies end in abortions.

When we asked women who reported abortions, how old they were at their first abortion, the result was shocking: 81% reported that they were teenagers. Even more alarming, 59% were not yet 16 years old. That’s statutory rape. These data are hard to accept.

But they point to the need for the state to do a great deal more than tinker with the law.

For example, in 1984, we modified the Age of Majority Act CAP 11, s.13, to allow 16-year-olds to have access to healthcare without parental consent. Yet almost forty years later no one knows that law – not adolescents, not healthcare workers, not Health and Family Life Educators, not social workers. It has not been effectively disseminated.

Besides, reducing the age for lawful access to contraceptives to 16, merely corrected the absurd legal gap between lawful sex at 16 and the requirement of parental consent for contraceptive until 18. To address the social problem of early sexual debut, there should be no age constraint. We must trust the professionalism of our health care workers.

Our situation is dire: The Caribbean has the highest abortion rate in the world, and the second earliest age of sexual debut in the world.

While we insist on parental consent below 16; our laws permit children as young as 12 (twelve) to be held criminally responsible for their actions. Why is there a gap of four years between criminal responsibility and civil responsibility?

Sincerely,

ASPIRE

This article was originally published by Antigua News Room. Read the original article here: ASPIRE Calls for Wider Contraceptive Access Ahead of World Contraception Day.