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Criminalizing Teen Pregnancy
A Look at Tanzania’s Teen-Pregnancy Policies
About a year ago, I found myself standing in front of about a hundred Tanzanian secondary-school girls. Ranging from ages 12 to 19, I gathered these girls to discuss menstrual health and hygiene. I’d been living in the village of Mvaa for almost a year working with the Peace Corps, and I’d spent the first few months narrowing my focus for young adult outreach. After numerous conversations with the student body, school administrators, the village government, and health clinic workers, it was clear what we needed to address — sexual health care. This proved far more difficult than a scheduled seminar to discuss sexual wellness, due to cultural taboos and national laws prohibiting and restricting education around safe sex practices, pregnancy, and menstruation. In 2017, the current president John Magufuli reintroduced a 1960s-era discriminatory law that “stops pregnant girls in Tanzania from attending regular school and punishes teachers who don’t honor the ban.” Secondary-school girls are often subject to mandatory pregnancy tests during the school day to ensure compliance with this mandate.
If a girl is, in fact, pregnant, the girl will be banned from regular school — forced to resort to vocational or unaffordable private institutions. According to the Tanzanian Ministry of Health, “27% of girls…
