The China Central Television's International Channel recently reported that among all adolescent girls aged 19, 3-8 percent have sexual experience and Chinese women's pregnancy age is tending to be younger than before.

In the past, with little knowledge of physiology and sex, young women, who became pregnant before marriage, had to take induced abortion secretly at small clinics, since they were afraid to be looked down upon by other people and be scolded by parents.

For these young women, they not only suffer from physical pain, but also great psychological pressure. In recent years, the number of young women pregnant before marriageable age has grown at soaring speed, arising concern among the general public. In many parts of China, special aid centers have been established for these young women. In these aid centers, young women can not only receive induced abortion, they are also provided with psychological help.

In Shanghai, a telephone hotline has been opened for young women who became pregnant accidentally. Soon after it was opened, it received 11,000 calls asking for help. However, 90 percent of the young women who went for abortion kept it secret from their parents. In Changchun, Jilin Province, the young women's aid center has received 1,300 calls. However, the issues that concerned the callers appeared to be strange sometimes. Some one, for instance, asked whether he could marry the little girl next door after he took her hands.

Another one wanted to know whether she would be pregnant after being kissed by her classmate. Still another wondered whether an 11-year-old girl could marry, and so on and so forth. In an investigation conducted among middle school students, when asked what played a most important part in forming their sex sense, 52.5 percent of them said it was "newspapers and magazines," 55.7 percent said it was "radios and televisions”, 26.43 percent said it was "computers and the Internet." Only 10 percent of them said it came from their teachers. The investigation did not mention a word about family education, since in China, most parents are still not comfortable with the idea of talking about sex topic at home with their children.

(China News Service July 14, 2006)