A Pregnant Problem
covering burma and southeast asia
Friday, March 29, 2024
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A Pregnant Problem


By Louis Reh NOVEMBER, 2005 - VOLUME 13 NO.11


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“My mother never told me how to avoid pregnancy,” she says.

 

In the Mae La camp for Karen refugees, near Mae Sot, on the Burma-Thai border, 75 young women have become pregnant so far this year, according to statistics kept by the camp clinic. But, like the Ban Tractor camp, the statistics are probably incomplete because many young women shun the clinic, reluctant to make their pregnancy officially known.

 

The clinic’s ethnic Karen director, Billion, says the free distribution of condoms and sex education are avoided out of respect for traditional Karen values. Says Billion: “We have to avoid causing shock.”

 

The problem is not only rooted in an enduring conservative tradition and an unbridgeable generation gap, however. The church, which plays a major role in Karen and Karenni life, bears much responsibility, maintain many critics.

 

In July, a church in Burma’s Karenni State appeared to be relaxing Catholic doctrine slightly when it issued a statement saying couples who used condoms could, in certain extenuating circumstances, be “forgiven.” Nevertheless, the church, in Loikaw, repeated the orthodox Catholic stand that birth control denied life and was therefore a sin—a view that fits in comfortably with the conservative traditions of the older Karen and Karenni generations.



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