Thousands sign petition for doctors, midwives to report underage pregnancy to police

Nearly 6,000 people have petitioned the department of health to introduce a policy that forces doctors to report pregnancies in minors to the police so officers can investigate statutory rape.

The petition, started by Kekeletso Khena, called on the health department to follow in the footsteps of the basic education department’s Prevention and Management of Learner Pregnancy in Schools Act.

The act makes pregnancy in minors a notifiable incident and schools are obliged to report cases to authorities.

“This has resulted in a number of cases being reported to the police and enabled better collection of data. However, this is not enough as many of the pregnant minors are quickly pulled out of school and hidden from society before the pregnancy can show or the school can find out and report the matter to authorities,” Khena said.

Health minister Joe Phaahla is urged to introduce a similar policy that makes pregnancy in minors a notifiable incident in the healthcare sector. 

"Introducing this policy will make it compulsory for medical personnel to report pregnancies in minors to police for criminal investigations to curb the ever-increasing statutory rape of minors”, Khena said. 

The petition specifically includes midwives and doulas, not only doctors, as some young girls are forced to give birth at home. 

Statistics recorded 83,000 girls aged between 10 and 17 having given birth during the 2019/2020 financial year. The highest was KwaZulu-Natal with 18,550 births, followed by Limpopo with 13,129 births and the Eastern Cape with 12,671 births that year.

The 2021/2022 financial year recorded 90,037 births by girls aged between 10 and 19 years, of which 660 were aged under 13 years.

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