Barbados: 16 and Under
THE AGE OF MEDICAL CONSENT should go below the 16-year limit which Minister of Family and Youth Affairs Dr Esther Byer-Suckoo is proposing.
This is being recommended by the executive director of the Barbados Family Planning Association, George Griffith.
He said there were too many cases of sexual activity in young people below the age of 16 for any regulation to be so rigid.
Full Article : nationnews.com
Barbados Government To Lower Age Of Consent
The recent announcement by the government that they intend to lower the age of consent from eighteen years old to sixteen has caused many Barbadians to flicker eye-brows. The decision if promulgated will see sixteen year olds being able to seek medical attention without the consent of their parents.
Full Article : bajan.wordpress.com
Doctor consent age ‘silly’
DROPPING THE AGE at which young people can legally gain medical attention without their parents’ consent to 16 will remove a number of “silly” irregularities.
That’s the view of Professor E. R. Walrond, the man who made the recommendation in a controversial report released a few years ago.
Full Article : nationnews.com
Worldwide ages of consent
Worldwide ages of consent
This table lists different countries around the world, and shows the ages at which people of different sexualities can legally have sex.
Age of Consensual Sex in the USA
What is a ‘right’ age of consent?
BBC News Online looks at the age of sexual consent around the world and how one nation may differ from another.
AGE OF CONSENT AROUND THE WORLD
Argentina – 15
Bahamas – 16
Canada – 14
Colombia – male 14, female 12
India – 18
Indonesia – male 19, female 16
Hungary – 14
Peru – male 14, female 12
Tunisia – 20
UK – 16
US – federal age 16
What is Canada’s age of consent?
The age of consent is 18 years where the sexual activity involves exploitative activity, such as prostitution, pornography or where there is a relationship of trust, authority or dependency. For other sexual activity, the age of consent is 14 years.
Britain: Drop age of consent to 14, says academic
The legal age of consent should be lowered from 16 to 14 for young people who are less than two years apart in age, according to an academic.
Dr Matthew Waites, a lecturer in sociology at Glasgow University, said criminalising all consensual sexual activity up to 16 was not appropriate.
His comments will be controversial given Britain’s high levels of under-age pregnancy and because they follow a damning UN study which showed Britain was the worst place in the developed world to be a child, partly because of early sexual intercourse rates and high teenage pregnancies.
What are we really trying to teach children? I hope they are prepared to handle the infleux of foreign child molesters and pedophiles. A ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.
Gopeesingh: 18,000 abortions match T&T births
By peter balroop
Girls are having sex from the age of nine, and there are 18,000 abortions a year in T&T. There also were 18,000 babies born, with 7,000 of the mothers being teenagers.
The claim came from gynaecologist, Dr Tim Gopeesingh, during debate in the Lower House on Friday. He said Social Development Minister Dr Amery Browne could confirm the statistic, a claim Browne did not deny when he wound up debate on a Bill to Amend the Children’s Authority Act, 2000.
The hospitals were flooded with women seeking treatment for botched abortions; some died, and the internal organs of some were so “damaged” they were no longer able to become pregnant.
At Port-of-Spain clinics, ten out of 15 women seeking pre-natal treatment were teenagers; in other areas it was ten out of 25.
He said the fathers were men in their 40s and 50s who were, in fact, guilty of statutory rape, but who escaped punishment.
In many cases, he said, they were not even taking care of their offspring.
The State should set in place a plan to identify these fathers and hold them responsible, urged Gopeesingh, UNC-A MP for Caroni East.
He said the medical fraternity was shocked to see women aged 20 suffering from cervical cancer, and that was because they started having sexual relations from age “nine or ten.”
He also lamented that infant mortality was not at first world standard, and children who grew up would either face the fate of being kidnapped, or would die or be injured in road accidents because the breathalyser was not in place.
http://www.guardian.co.tt/archives/2008-06-15/news9.html
The pregnancy fairytale
By Suszanna Clarke
Tuesday, June 17 2008
Every year in Germany, approximately 20 babies are abandoned. Out of that 20, around half die before being discovered and rescued. In a country where giving birth anonymously is against the law, the mothers of these babies have to disguise their pregnancies and then give birth alone, in the hope that no one will realise and report them. It is estimated that 50 children are born in secret every year in Germany and the majority of the time the mothers are young and poor. Fewer than half of these babies survive the birthing process.
Over the last few years, there has been an increase in the number of baby murders in the country. The majority of the suspects are young, single mothers who hid their pregnancies from their family and friends, gave birth alone and then killed their newborn. Often these women felt desperate and alone during the pregnancy, with the feelings of helplessness and anxiety exacerbated by the newborn they felt unable to cope with and unable to explain.
Full Article : newsday.co.tt
Single mothers face one of the most challenges job in the world. Believe it or not bringing up a child without the assistance of your male partner is no easy job. This is the situation that shows who is a true caring mother and the one who simply neglects her child just to pursue her own interests neglecting the child. Though it is not an easy job, mothers should for the time-being, put a pause to their materialistic hunger and take the child upbringing as the primary focus in life. Those women who have done this have brought up the best of men in the world and led a happy and fulfilling life. On the other hand there have been women who neglected their children in their tender years just to repent later in their lives.