Abortion rates among teens in the Zhejiang Province capital have
risen this month as young students rush to a free local clinic to
terminate their pregnancies while on vacation from schools and
colleges.
Busy doctors from the Hangzhou Youth Reproduction Health Service
Center said they were struggling to keep up with the demand.
"Before, we only had two or three abortion operations a day,"
Zheng Weili, director of the center which provides free
consultations and abortions for students, said.
"But since the winter vacation started last week, we will be
performing about 10 abortions every day, and most of them are high
school and college students."
Zheng, who is in charge of a hotline about reproduction health,
said callers found out about the free service, mainly from their
classmates or through websites.
"I think most pregnant students don't want their schools and
classmates to know," Zheng said.
"So they think the vacation is a good time for an operation and
recovery. That way, no one at the school would notice it."
Most of the pregnant students are 18 to 20 years old, but some
are even younger.
The Hangzhou Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine last week
treated a 15-year-old, accompanied by her mother, according to a
report in the Hangzhou-based Today Morning Express. The girl told
the doctor that she was suffering from an irregular period. But
after examination, the doctor Fu Ping found that she was two months
pregnant.
(China Daily February 16, 2007)