VietNamNet Bridge - Showing affection boldly right in the classroom, uploading sex videos to the Internet, making scenes of jealousy at school, pregnant teenagers walking through the halls: these are the signs, say worried parents and school officials, of the degeneration of “school love”.

School “love” degenerates!

Measuring love by sex

A veteran teacher in the northern port city of Hai Phong says that 10 years ago, students only dared to secretly exchange a short clip of sex scenes of a schoolgirl of Ngo Quyen High School in Hai Phong. Today, such clips are rampant on the Internet. Many clips are shot very professionally and the “actors” also “play” very professionally.

In June 2012, to record the memorable moments before graduation, two high-school students in Kien Thuy District, Hai Phong, shot a 9-minute sex video in the toilet of the girl’s home. Shortly after that, the sex clip found its way to the Internet and quickly spread on many forums. The girl in the video asked the police to help to block the spread of the clip and to find the one who posted it to the Internet.

Similarly, two tenth graders of a high school in Hai Duong province also filmed their sex scenes in an 8-minute clip. The clip then appeared on the Internet and the two teenagers were summoned by the police. The kids declared that they shot the video to record a memory of their love, using the boy’s cell phone. A friend of the boy borrowed the phone, found the clip and uploaded it.

Also “burning themselves” for school love, many pupils are willing to leave their home, to make scenes of jealousy and shoot clips to humiliate their rivals or even kill their rivals in love.

Unwilling mothers

A teenage mother in Quang Nam Province.

During a physical training class, an 11th grader in Nhu Thanh District, Thanh Hoa Province, suddenly held her belly and fell to the ground. The girl was brought to the school infirmary. Her teachers and classmates were shocked to find that she was in labor. The girl then dropped out of school.

In May of last year, the People’s Court of Tien Phuoc District, Quang Nam Province, sentenced Nguyen Tan Trung, born in 1990, to 30 months in prison for having sexual intercourse with two girls born in 1995 and 1996. Both girls were pregnant and gave birth to a child, with tests conclusively proving Trung’s fatherhood. Both girls had to quit school to work and support themselves and their children.

Falling in love at a very young age, a 16-year-old in Tinh Bien District, An Giang Province, recently gave birth to limbless baby.

This girl fell in love with her current husband when she was just 12 years old (6th grade). The two families tried to persuade them to stop but they failed. One year later, two kids left school to get married.

After a miscarriage, the girl gave birth to a child without arms or legs. When the media reported this case, the local authorities investigated. The husband now faces three years in prison for probation for marrying a teenage girl.

According to the Department of Population and Family Planning of Thanh Hoa Province, in 2013, the province had 31,776 newly married couples, including 2,432 juvenile mothers, accounting for 7.6 percent.

The department’s vice chief, Mr. Nguyen Van Thang, says that most juvenile mothers live in the mountainous districts, where the education level is low and there are many backward habits.

School love and abortion

A male student reads the commitment to abortion at the Central Obstetrics Hospital in Hanoi.

Lack of knowledge on reproductive health is the primary cause of the increase in abortion among Vietnamese teenagers.

At 8am at the Center for Reproductive Health and Family Planning of the Central Obstetrics Hospital, Hanoi, several visitors were seated on the bench in front of the consulting room for juveniles.

Holding the “Guide for abortion by medicine" leaflet in one hand, a boy turned to hug the shoulder of his girlfriend, who looked scared. Escorting the girl into the consulting room, the boy returned to the bench and read the leaflet.

A woman sitting next to him borrowed the leaflet. The boy asked: "Do you also take the pills?" The woman nodded her head. The boy shared his story with her, acting slightly bewildered: "One week ago, the doctor said the fetus was too small, so my girlfriend could not take the pills yet. I don’t know how it will be this time".

According to the boy, he and his girlfriend are students of a secondary school in Hanoi. They’d been in love for only six months, but this was her second abortion.

In less than three hours, reporters saw six teenagers asking for abortion consultation at the center. Some arrived with their mothers and others with their boyfriends. All of them left the consulting room in tears, and those who discussed the abortion procedures with their boyfriends could not hide their fears of the procedure.

Dr. Nguyen Thi Hong Minh, director of the Center for Reproductive Health and Family Planning, says the center receives several teen girls who wanted abortion each day. Some are only 13-15, but when they saw the doctors, the fetuses were over 12 weeks old, making abortion more dangerous. Minh says some schoolgirls bought abortion medicines and took them at home, often causing hemorrhages.

The second national survey on "Vietnam’s Adolescents and Young People" reports that young people have a more open concept of pre-marital sex, and the age at which they are having sex for the first time is declining. Up to 36 percent of adolescents aged 14-17 have had sex. There were even cases of voluntary sex amongst children 10-12 years old.

According to this study, of the 977 surveyed women reporting having been sexually active between the ages of 15 and 24, 8.4 percent said they had had an abortion at least once.

Statistics of the Vietnam Family Planning Association show that the abortion rate among adolescents in Vietnam is the highest in Southeast Asia, and ranks 5th in the world. There are about 300,000 abortions yearly in the age group of 15-19, of which pupils and students account for 70 percent.

According to the General Department of Population - Family Planning, while the overall abortion rate in Vietnam has declined in the past 10 years, the rate among adolescents and youths has increased, now accounting for over 20 percent of abortion cases.

It is said that the statistics from hospitals is the tip of the iceberg because nobody can calculate the number of abortions performed in private health facilities.

Surveys in some health facilities in Hai Phong reveal that, for every 1,000 cases of abortion, about 150 are performed on minors.

To further confusing the issue, according to Hai Phong Obstetrics Hospital, most minors declare false ages when they register for an abortion.

NLD