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Ploy Bunluesilp / NBC News
Panida Saengjan became pregnant at 16 years old, when she was just in high school in Bangkok. She is seen her with her now 4-year-old son Haroon who her mother is raising.
BANGKOK, Thailand – If you are a teen with a sexual urge, what should you do?
It's a question faced by young people across the world, and one met with many responses.
So high school seniors in Thailand were perplexed this year when they were asked for the answer in a nationwide multiple-choice test for students hoping to win a coveted place at university. They were given five possible options to choose from:
A: Call friends to go play football (soccer)
B: Talk to your family
C: Try to sleep
D: Go out with a friend of the opposite sex
E: Invite a close friend to see a movie
Most students had no idea how to respond. And it quickly became clear that they were not the only ones who struggled to identify the right answer. Parents and teachers were equally baffled.
The story soon attracted national media attention, and Thai educational experts were interviewed to share their insights. But even they seemed uncertain. The tentative consensus was that students were probably expected to pick option B — “Talk to your family.”
It seemed like the answer adults might want to hear, even though most teenagers in the real world would be appalled at the very idea of discussing their sexual urges with their parents. The most realistic answer was probably option D — go on a date.
So there was widespread incredulity when the preferred answer was eventually revealed by Dr. Samphan Phanphrut, head of the national exam board that drew up the tests. It was option A —“Call friends to go play football.” Regardless of whether they were male or female, Thai youth were supposed to deal with sexual urges by playing soccer.
For many Thais, the key lesson learned from the saga had nothing to do with soccer. Rather, it was that Thai officials have a total lack of understanding about the lives of teenagers and the importance of sensible sex education.
Growing teen pregnancy problem
It's an issue that is causing increasing problems in this Southeast Asian country.
Ploy Bunluesilp / NBC News
Haroon, a 4-year-old in Bangkok being raised by his grandmother because his mother was just 16 years old when she became pregnant.
"The number of pregnant teenagers is growing every year. And they are getting younger and younger," said Apiradee Chappanapong of Plan Thailand, an NGO that champions children's rights and education.
In fact, Thailand has the second-highest pregnancy rate among 15-19 year-olds in the world, according to the government’s Office of Welfare Promotion, Protection and Empowerment of Vulnerable Groups. (South Africa has the highest rate).
The issues in Thailand are complex. Contrary to the country's image as a hedonistic sex tourism destination, Thai culture remains highly conservative, but premarital sex is widespread although many older Thais regard it as taboo. (As a result, underage girls are often pressured to marry, especially in rural areas.)
This conservatism means subject is rarely discussed in Thai families, and as the debacle over this year's university exams demonstrated, schools are also failing to teach Thai youth what they need to know.
Many teachers and education ministry bureaucrats refuse to acknowledge that premarital sex is a reality. Instead of teaching teenagers how to avoid pregnancy through the use of contraception, they preach abstinence. And when Thai teenagers become pregnant, they often have nobody to turn to. Legal abortion is only available to teenagers if their parents approve, and many Thai girls don't consider that an option.
“I don’t think my school taught me enough about sex education,” said Nat who asked not to reveal her full name, a 17-year-old who became pregnant after running away from her home in an area of northern Thailand where traditional values remain strong.
Unable to get a legal abortion because she was estranged from her parents, she chose the dangerous option of ordering abortion pills online and taking them without any medical supervision. She told me she suffered severe vaginal bleeding afterwards.
Many conservative Thais deny that outdated and incompetent education is the problem. They say Thai teenagers are being corrupted by dangerous modern influences such as racy movies, social media and Internet chat rooms. Facebook was even cited as one of the causes of Thailand's growing teenage pregnancy crisis in a recent study by the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB).
Dangerous illegal abortions
Another controversial issue is whether Thailand's abortion laws should be reformed. Approximately 95 percent of Thais are Buddhists, according to the CIA World Factbook, who believe taking any life is a sin. Officially, abortion is illegal except in cases of rape, incest or underage sex, or when the mother's physical or mental health is at risk.
Even when women have a legitimate reason to undergo a legal abortion in Thai hospitals, many are deterred by the judgmental attitude of doctors and nurses, according to 39-year-old activist Supatra Panuthut, who counsels women with unplanned pregnancies at Sahathai Foundation in Bangkok.
For most women who want to terminate a pregnancy, the only option is to do so illegally. In many cases, abortions are conducted using unsafe procedures and in unsanitary conditions. In a notorious case in 2010, more than 2,000 aborted fetuses were discovered at a temple in Bangkok after locals complained of an unpleasant smell. Earlier this April, a five-month-old fetus was found dumped in a hospital bathroom. Newborn babies have also been found abandoned in bus shelters and garbage bins.
A small number of abortion clinics run by NGOs providing safe and compassionate treatment occupy a legal grey area: they are technically illegal, but the authorities have generally allowed them to operate, as long as they do not promote their services too openly.
But recently police raided one of these clinics after a well-known model told the media she had an abortion there. Panuthut fears the raid will end up discouraging some women from seeking abortions at responsible clinics and could lead to more unsafe backstreet abortions.
It seems unlikely that the law will be changed to allow more Thai women to legally terminate their pregnancies. Successive Thai governments have shown no enthusiasm for such a controversial move, and indeed some Thais want to see the law tightened even further so that abortion is totally outlawed.
Coping with unwanted pregnancies
Meanwhile, out of the approximately 250,000 Thai teenagers who become pregnant each year, half of them seek abortions, according to Dr. Yongyut Wongpiromsarn, Senior Expert in Mental Health, Thai Ministry of Public Health.
That means more than 100,000 children are being born each year to teenage mothers who in many cases cannot properly look after them.
Often these children are raised by their grandparents or other relatives, rather than their biological mothers.
This was how Panida Saengjan coped when she became pregnant at the age of 16 while she was a high school student in Bangkok. She told me she was terrified of the dangers of an illegal abortion, but admitted she was also too immature to look after her baby, a boy she named Haroon.
Now 4 years old, Haroon has been raised by Saengjan's mother. When I met them at their home, Saengjan was laughing and playing with Haroon, whom she said was more like a little brother to her than a son.
Many teenage mothers end up giving their children to foster homes. Palm, an 18-year-old I interviewed who spoke on the condition of anonymity, wept as she told me about how she had to give away her 5-month-old son after her boyfriend broke up with her.
Government officials insist they are taking the problem of teen pregnancy seriously. But while Thai bureaucrats remain so detached from reality that they consider it appropriate to tell teenagers to choose soccer instead of sex, there seems little prospect of a sensible solution any time soon.
Leave a Comment:
Sex is as natural an urge as breathing, eating, and going to the toilet. Only in the "enlightened" West do we continually try to legislate its practice. We invent birth control mechanisms and some religious fanatics condemn them. We have safe abortions available but those same religious fanatics want to criminalize them. We deny young people the pleasures of sex, included in our genes to encourage us to have sex, and create lists of sex offenders to wear the Scarlet Letter for life to appease these anti-biology @!$%#s. I'd rather have my kids grow up in Thailand and give me healthy grandchildren than to have them in therapy for life for wanting to have sex when they were teens.
You want your kids to grow up in the pedophile Mecca of the world? Ooookaay. If you say so.
I was reading your comment and nodding until I reached your words about the sex-offenders. Are you that stupid and ignorant? Just because a child's body becomes sexually mature does not mean they become psychologically or economically mature to deal with consequences of sex. Or are you simply a repressed pedophile yourself sharing your filthy fantasies with the rest of us?
gia-1007883,
Bring your urges to Thailand or many other Asian countries and practice what you preach...
I Guarantee you will not need your return ticket...
I don't care about Thailand. I'm sure teens love sex there too. Parents need to talk openly about it. but I'm sure just like here in the US....they fail at it.
Thats a tough one...sex or soccer...hmmm...sex...soccer...sex...soccer...hmmm...: /
The two are actually very similar.
The object of each is to score.
America baseball, home run.
I could see soccer killing the sex drive and any other urge except maybe to drink or sleep.
Sounds a lot like the attitude of the leadership in this country. How to deal with normal teenage urges? Teach abstinence, shame, and fear. Make it extremely difficult to get an abortion. Don't teach our children how to avoid pregnancy. Yepper. That should take care of it. NEXT!
"Many teachers and education ministry bureaucrats refuse to acknowledge that premarital sex is a reality. Instead of teaching teenagers how to avoid pregnancy through the use of contraception, they preach abstinence."
Hmm.. this sounds familiar.
I would prefer hot wet ucking over soccer any day. who wouldn't ?
What are they are all so confused about? It's a well-known fact that sexual urges can be redirected into intense physical workout. It's why athletes don't have sex right before a big match or competition, DUH.
Are you kidding? People don't have sex before a big sports event because of the myth that coaches tell people about sex reducing their performance for the game. DUH.
Like Mickey said to Rocky, "women weaken legs!"
More people should have abortions. Stop welfare, dont understand why we pay stupid people to spread their legs. Fast food is always hiring and there should be no reason why someone can't get a job. These people on welfare are most of the time druggies and dont take care of their children anyways. If you dont like what I said I dont care, you probably should of been aborted too.
I'm a senior. I find a catheter will put a real crimp in the desire department.
And this makes Thai different from the US how???
If someone replaced "Thai" with "US", the article would fit just as well.
"Many teachers and education ministry bureaucrats refuse to acknowledge that premarital sex is a reality. Instead of teaching teenagers how to avoid pregnancy through the use of contraception, they preach abstinence."
Well yeah, I know, I've lived here in the United States for all my life, and our society's prevailing belief has always been obv...huh? Whaddaya mean Thailand?
I think it is interesting to note- the article makes the assumption that the solution to the teen pregnancy problem is contraception and access to abortion, and makes only one mention of the Thai culture's response that corrupting influences such as pornography and the hedonistic culture of the West are to blame.
I can't see how teen pregnancy is caused by lack of contraception and access to abortion, when the article has already noted that the rate of teen pregnancy is going up and up- this means that, without contraception and abortion, it was very low for a long time- until the cultural forces promoting premarital sex came into Thailand.
Well that expalins why I don't have any children yet, I played soccer in high school!
actually i like better the soccer option than the ridiculous abstinence only sex ed pushed by the gop. just saying...
It amazes me that we are so concerned about the safety of the one seeking the abortion. What about the safety of the one being aborted.
actually i rather choose the soccer option over the ridiculous "abstinence only-read your bible" option preached by the GOP.
Ryan In Texas said:
"What really changed was people deciding that their own selfish demands exceed the importance of the child. You can see that with the many abortions women have. They have no problem killing an unborn child, but keeping their legs closed is asking too much."
To all the males out there who blame women for not keeping their legs closed, like Ryan here... are you all virgins until you're married, or do you have sex with your girlfriends/fiancees? Do you want all women to stop having sex with you? Abstinence only until marriage, since there is no other form of birth control that is 100% effective? I didn't think so! Guys want to have sex, and generally they want to have it with females, so don't you dare talk about the women not keeping their legs closed. Who pulled those legs apart in the first place and shoved a penis in there for their own selfish sexual pleasure? The woman is the one left to clean up the mess, so she takes all the blame? YOU ARE RIDICULOUS. Talk about a double standard!
If you MEN want to stop all the abortions, the answer is simple: STOP HAVING SEX. How would you like that? Maybe YOU are the ones who should be trying harder to control your sexual urges. Or do you think that men by nature cannot control their desires, so it's up to the women to stop them? Guess what, women have sexual needs too. But if you're that concerned with all the women murdering all your unwanted spawn, then STOP HAVING SEX. PERIOD.
I hate seeing people always talking about the 'hood rats on welfare' when its clear just who you're talking about. But in my neighborhood (NOT the hood) you should see the large number of European immigrants and especially the Hasidic Jews who breed LARGE families, just like if not worse than the 'hood rats' who are on welfare, medicaid, food stamps, etc., and then tith their constant in breeding, they're guaranteed to pop out a disabled child or two, per family and they keep on receiving public assistance. Is a benefit for them and 'entitlement' for everyone else? How are they entitled to such benefits? Many of them never work outside their homes/communities/private businesses and what do they put into the system? So, stop making this a race issue. Bet there are lots of other people living in rural America who live this same way. I've seen it firsthand. So, stop making this a race issue.
For all of you that think abortion is murder let me add one thing to that. When I hear people say that abortion is murder, I believe you if a woman is idk... 5-9 months pregnant. But if she is... lets say.... 1-3 months pregnant I dont think that having an abortion then is murder. At (this is just my estimation, it could/probably is wrong but just bear with me) 1-3 months of being pregnant, the fetus has not developed the heart, brain, and lungs to the point where its working on its own. It still is just a bunch of cells growing. My point is dont have an abortion if the child has already developed to the point where you can clearly see that it is "baby" and has a developed brain, heart and lungs. If it doesn't and is still in the "very early stages of development," I dont see a problem with it.
I agree Joshua! I personally am opposed to late-term abortions unless in cases of health risk, but that decision should be left to the woman & her doctor, not legislators. If a woman is say 3 months pregnant but it's an ectopic pregnancy - meaning that the egg has attached itself in the narrow fallopian tube - the pregnancy must be terminated because neither mother nor offspring can survive it. So does that make her and her doctor murderers? Or are they simply terminating a pregnancy because it isn't viable? They are simply ending the woman's medical condition of being pregnant. We have to be very careful about the restrictions put on abortions and the laws about personhood beginning at conception... otherwise any time a woman has a miscarriage, which happens A LOT, she could potentially be charged with murder!
1. Why is this a question they ask for college entrance? Are they saying, NO SEX IN COLLEGE?
2. Their preferred answer is exceptionally stupid. They are clueless like many college entrance exam writers.
3. What outcome are we wishing from all of this? No kids? Reduced population? Prosperity will produce both of these results.
Spread the use of CONDOMS an Change the culture, is the only way, China was sucefull in this, the strong government control their population birth rate and their poverty, they change their old culture for another new and work ! but still overpopulated, India is, Africa and many countries go in the way to colapse in the fiture, their are a menaze to another countries no so populated o with better economies, dont just save the childrens, TEACH TO THE ADULTS !
ha ha yes I agree sex or soccer soccer will lose everytime. how about sex and soccer?