Abstract

PIP: Most teenagers learn about sex from the media and their friends; yet this information may be inaccurate or misleading. It may even encourage risky behavior if it promotes an ineffective means of contraception. The IPPF has published a very useful report on youth's sexual and reproductive health needs, specifically the need for tailoring family planning/reproductive health programs to meet the needs of youth. The report provides examples of successful projects in different countries that health and sex educators in the Pacific can adapt. Teenagers in the Pacific do become pregnant and suffer from sexually transmitted diseases, indicating that their family planning/reproductive health needs are not being met. In the Pacific as well as elsewhere, the norms and values of adults in authority constrain out-of-school programs for young people. Traditional family planning programs only serve married women or couples. Adolescents also do not seek services at family planning programs even if they do not serve just married women or couples because the teens fear the moralizing and judgmental attitudes of the staff. A tragic repercussion of this neglect of adolescents' reproductive health needs in Fiji is the increase in infanticide. The stigma surrounding unmarried mothers often drive young women to conduct such a desperate act. They tend to find no support from families and friends and no future. What is needed is family planning services that are accessible to unmarried teenagers and young women living in poverty, both of whom are most at risk of unwanted pregnancies.