From AFP:
Every night for a week, Mazlinda Majlam had the same nightmare. “It’s a silhouette of a baby sitting down, and he will just be looking at me. The baby has no eyes, but he will be looking at me,” she said.
The horrifying dreams began in April, the night she returned home from having an abortion – two months after she was retrenched as a result of Singapore’s worst recession in more than 40 years.
—–
With abortion figures rising amid anecdotal evidence that the economic downturn is a contributing factor, Singapore’s efforts to encourage couples to have more babies, including financial perks, could be derailed.
Latest official data put the 2007 fertility rate – the number of births for each woman in her lifetime – at 1.29 births. The ideal population replacement rate is 2.1 births per woman.
Read the full article on AFP.
Singaporeans are worried about whether they are capable of feeding themselves before deciding whether they need additional mouth in th family. I wonder if similar surveys were carried out on number of parents abandoned by their children in old folks homes too? If these two surveys conclude an unfavourable conditions, than I would think Singapore leader has failed completely in building a strong nation. Singapore being the best place to live in, is nothing more than pure commercial advertisement.
This is very sad and we see the lack of a welfare system that devastated families who do not want to keep their babies especially if it is a third or fourth child.
In the past condom was used as a means of birth control, today they are adapted for other uses and birth control is least of the uses.. It is not a wonder that abortion is high . Worse , young are taught that premarital sex is ok and in voque.
Now more than ever, a realistic and comprehensive sexuality education program is required ! Parents, please, regardless of religious belief, please teach your kids about safe sex.
Safest “sex” is…not to have sex! It is impossible to get pregnant, contract STDs, etc if don’t have sex!
But then, people are people, regardless of age. We still have bodily lusts or physical expressions of passion.
Watchment, if you read this article, the lady who has had an abortion, was already married. Regardless of marital status, she still had an unplanned pregnancy which required termination.
It is always easy to accuse any generation of having an irresponsible mindset towards sex. But ultimately we all have to take it upon ourselves to plan a pragmatic approach towards sex.
With due respect to those whose religious faiths preach abstinence for avoiding pregnancy, please, if that works for you and your faith is strong, more power to you! But if the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, please, practice birth control, and better still, practice condom use.
99% of condom reliability is better than 0 % of abstinence
abortion is the lesser evil compared to a child left to fend for him/herself as some have done is to abandon newbornes & are left to die, or are born into dysfunctional families.
////The health ministry spokesman said the regulations on abortion were meant to “ensure that all children born in Singapore are wanted children, who will be properly cared for”.////
no reason why should taxpayers money be spent on rising an unwanted child & potential social problems associated with dysfunctional families.
raising a child is a heavy responsibility, more so with the high cost of living locally. not all bundles are “bundles of joy”…
*not that all dysfunctional families are problematic, but for those that are, they do require more forms of social assistance. & it does create a certain level of class divide (real or perceived) that the poor have more problems.
The best form of birth control is recession. Nobody dares to give birth, old folks are abandoned, divorce rate gone up, Ah Long Pte Ltd is making profit during recession and so are our ministers and leader. Just too bad that welfarism is not in their dictionary for us, it is for them who paid themselives rediculous monetary perks to talk cock sing song during this crisis. Nobody has ever felt so humiliating than Singaporeans.
This is a very sad situation.
MY PLEA:
Years ago, we had restrictions to have more than 2 children. Every life is precious. All must try to put an end to the abortion acts.
For those who are decided to go ahead, please, please re-consider.
Tell you a secret – wished I had at least 4 children, but I am a believer and still of the PAP establishment.
No regrets, yet REGRETED the scarcity of family members.
Very Good New for LKY, good genes are the Mandarians from Central China and even Baba,Noya can’t compare with them.
To improved the Genetic pool of Singaporeans, let us be the minority and hope one day the Mandrians will take over PAP just like they take over Suzhou!
Just a thought. If you add up the figures — 40,000 births last year, 12,000 abortions. If we could have managed to persuade those 12,000 pregnant women not to abort, but to become surrogate mums — in the long-term interests of the Republic — we would have come a lot closer to the 60,000 babies required to replenish the population.
Our pragmatic leaders should look for pragmatic solutions to problems.
I do not really blame singles who don’t wish to marry and have kids because if I were them, given the current bleak economic environment, I also would not want additional burden. Not that I’m selfish towards future generations, but to save others I must save myself first.
Corelation or cause-effect? We don’t know the demographics – mostly unmarried or married mums? If latter, more likely the financially stressed family. If former, it is other factors.
Still a good angle to the abortion story. I find it tragic that babies are aborted for this reason. Absolutely sad, if it is true.
Better for the Mandarians to take over the Baba’s in PAP and solved the problems!
>Singapore sees abortions rise amid recession
Malays can give half doz babies per mum, compared to china or indies, paap govt scared spore overrun by malay, so give free $$ to china boys & girl come study
Only 6 months ago the Straits Times reported that a quarter of sexually active women in Singapore do not use birth control:
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_304376.html
When a woman chooses an abortion, it is because it is the best option for her – for her individual circumstances, values and aspirations – in the bad situation of an unwanted pregnancy. What’s important here is to reduce the number of such bad situations (i.e. unwanted pregnancies) to begin with. Given the staggeringly high rates of failure to use birth control, it’s clear that better information about and accessibility to condoms and other birth control methods is needed.
- Jolene (www.glass-castle.org)
It is not due to lack of information but wrong information about the uses of condom and abortion. Condom is promoted as an aid to sexual pleasure. Condom encourages premarital sex. Abortion is promoted as solution to sexual act that has gone awry.
Married couples have access to birth control devices and pills and if there is any mishap more often they don’t resort to abortion.It is the unwanted pregnancy of the unmarried girls who are victims of deceit or promiscous girls who are reckless with sex, these are the people who would opt for abortions. Sex education that is not value based will not help but instead promotes curiousity of sex experimentation..
Access to condoms? They are so openly displayed at shop checkout counters and never before they are sold like cigarettes and sweets to any body without questions.
The Watchman:
I’m afraid you’re factually wrong. Research done at NUH in 2002 found that a very large proportion – 75.5% – of women presenting for abortion in the profile done were married women. See: Profile of women presenting for abortions in Singapore at the National University Hospital, Contraception, Volume 66, Issue 1, July 2002, Pages 41-46, Kuldip Singh, Y. F. Fong, and S. Y. Loh. The same study found that 33.2% of the women were presenting for repeat abortions which points strongly to a failure in teaching people to use preventative birth control.
I am also at a loss as to how you can think condom use is ‘promoted as an aid to sexual pleasure’. One of the perennial obstacles HIV outreach workers face, the world over is, the refusal of people – particularly but not only men – to use condoms on the grounds that condom use ‘reduces sensation’.
It’s theoretically possible, of course, that there are people who think of condoms as sexually enticing and are interested in having sex because condoms are so very titillating. But I think the vast majority of people would agee that such persons are in a very small majority; what leads to them having sex is not the irresistible nature of condoms, but finding that someone whom they find attractive is also interested in having sex with them. Drumming in the message “If you have sex, make sure you use a condom, correctly, 100% of all the time”, is not something which motivates most people to have sex. It is a very peculiar vision of human psychology that could think otherwise.
Jolene (www.glass-castle.org)
Further information can be found in this – slightly older – study as well:
http://smj.sma.org.sg/2901/2901smj10.pdf
Published in the Singapore Medical Journal. It also found that a majority of those seeking abortions – in this case 69.75% – were married, and that there was a disturbingly high proportion of sexually active women who did not utilise preventative contraception like condoms. Again, this suggests that if we wish to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies in Singapore, education about condom use and other methods of preventative contraception is vital.
Jolene (www.glass-castle.org)
I find this quite depressing. OK, from a medical standpoint, abortions are quite safe but they are psychologically unpleasant and I think people who think abortion is a form of contraception are seriously misguided.
Let’s focus on the right things for a change and start teaching our kids facts rather than interpretations. Yes, it would be nice if we only had sex with the person we married but pre-martial sex is not the great destroyer of family values – irresponsible sex (adultery, emotional abuse etc) is! Let’s also get it straight – knowing what a gay is and what is involved in the sexual act does not ENCOURAGE people to be naughty.
Yes abstinence is the best thing to avoid STD and pregnancy but you cannot teach it in such a way where abstinence is equivalent to being a good person and having sex, including the pre-marital variety is equivalent to moral degradation.
As well as abstinence, you should let people know that there are condoms and there is the pill. It’s not immoral to use either of these things.
Condoms are available but not used enough. We have too many guys who think that sex is no fun with a condom and std’s don’t happen to them. Using the pill is not a sign of immorality for a girl. It’s a tool of empowerment. But how are you going to get girls to get the pill if they’ve been taught that they’re sex lives are immoral and something parents will slam them for?
I also believe that it is VITAL to have values based sex education but we have to teach the right values – namely that sex does have consequences. There is no evidence that being a homosexual or having pre-martial sex is bad. There is plenty of evidence to show that not being responsible for the consequences is.
Boys must be taught that they have a responsibility for children. Girls need to be taught that sex is something they are willing participants in and therefore have a responsibility for. If people understand that there are reactions to actions, we might actually see some improvements in these depressing figures.
Please don’t tell me that the price of condoms is beyond the reach of most sexually active adults.
Truely sad…..they could have prevented the loss of a life with birth control methods…….
eh, this wan is not Aware saga, its how recession has contributed to abortions. not birth control methods, contraceptions…
how can recession (lack of financial means) be viewed in line with a birth control “device”? if so, does it mean the well off are indeed having more children, since most are well cushioned from recession?
yup it is due to the recession…but honestly, spare $5 plus buy some rubber shouldn’t be a problem rite?
The govenment should not shy away from the fact that we are now facing serious
social implications due to our inadequate and slow response in facing up to and tackling social and community issues and the absence of social welfare provision. Our state and citizens do need and want social welfare provision,
especially during this crisis and recession. The continual refusal to provide
citizens with social welfare would only result in more people ending their
lives prematurely, more abortion, broken families and loss of social cohesion and belonging to the state.
Increasing after talking to people I met, I find that many Singaporeans like me
have lost their faith in Singapore and the leaders governing the state.
The ever rising costs of living, lack of social welfare provision, provision
of foreign labour which drives down wages and put local employees at a disadvantage and at employers’ mercy are just some of the many reasons
making many Singaporeans unhappy, stressful and dissatisfied today.
Earning a decent living has become very difficult in today’s Singapore,
many have to put in long hours at work for a pay that may be just good enough
to pay the bills at the end of the month. When one loses the job, there is
no unemployment benefits or claim to fall back on. Ideally, everyone would
like to have a nice family with maybe two kids and take care of their aged parents as well. But given the very stressful and practical life in Singapore coupled with the absence of social welfare provision, people will naturally take on a more defensive stance and it’s all about survival in their mind.
spot on Righteous!
spare a thought for women who have to go through abortions because of economic uncertainty.
it is difficult for parent to have children in Singapore especially with job instability, having to worry whatever their jobs will still be available tomorrow, higher and higher cost of living, high medical costs, supporting elderly parents etc
yah lor, agreed with Righteous.
guess our government wants us to be super man and women, to be able pay for higher cost of living, to be self-reliance, to be able compete with foreigners, to take lower pay salary, to be able to take stress and yet to have more babies without stress, how to.
24) just my view on May 14th, 2009 1.21 am
I agree.
the only way to live peacefully in spore is to throw away ur pride & live like a slave to ur under (respected) garment
true, why spend so much effort & money to bring slaves up.
i feel so srry for tht baby:(
i am 14 and i need an abortion and i dont want to do it but i have too:(
it is BOUT THT SIZE BIN MY BELLY 12 weeks