Is Malaysia still not ready for sex education?
By Zan Azlee

The Malaysian mother who dumped her newborn baby in a cereal box in the United Kingdom takes the cake of highlighting an issue that has been so prevalent in Malaysia.

The mother, a 22-year-old student studying at Coventry University, has now been charged with murder.

According to reports, she had kept her pregnancy hidden, and once she had given birth, she stuffed the baby in a cereal box, a plastic bag, and then a luggage bag. The baby was found dead two days later.

If you are Malaysian, then you are probably familiar with cases like this because baby dumping has been a big problem in our country for decades now. We constantly read in the news about babies found everywhere, from rubbish dumpsters to toilets and bushes.

Why is it such a big problem in Malaysia?

Rising number of young mothers

OrphanCare, an NGO that created the baby hatch project, said it has saved 55 babies so far this year and 604 since its beginning in 2009.

The baby hatch is a small hatch that allows people to safely place a newborn baby and then disappear. An alarm will be triggered, and someone will come and rescue the baby. The hatch has a small mattress, light, and ventilation.

The babies dropped in the hatch will be sent to the hospital to receive the necessary healthcare and then later placed with a family or some other form of adult care.

There are currently eight baby hatches around the country. Three are in OrphanCare centres in Petaling Jaya, Johor Bahru, and Sungai Petani. Another five are at KPJ hospitals in Damansara, Petaling Jaya; Ipoh; Tawakal, Kuala Lumpur; Seremban; and AnNur Specialist Hospital in Bangi.

According to data from OrphanCare, the number of young mothers between the ages of 18 and 25 abandoning their babies is also rising. But some cases are even younger.

For example, a few days ago, a 44-year-old man and a 14-year-old girl were arrested in Sibu, Sarawak, for dumping a baby boy in a vegetable basket in the street. The man is now being investigated for baby dumping and statutory rape, and the girl for baby dumping.

This leads to a question that many Malaysians have been asking and something that I am also an advocate of – when will Malaysia introduce sex education into the country’s education system?

Still the same after 30 years?

When I was in secondary school back in the early 1990s, the only sex education we received was half a chapter in Biology, where we learned about the human body and how a sperm inseminates an ovum to produce a baby. That was it.

If we were Muslim, we would be told in religious class that we should stay away from zina (sex out of wedlock) and that it is a big sin and we would end up in hell if we did not. Anyone who took Moral Studies, please enlighten us on what happened in that class.

Were we ever told anything other than that? Not that I can remember, and if I am not mistaken, it is still the same situation 30 years later because there is still no proper sex education in schools in Malaysia.

We need to educate and create awareness among the youth about sex and not just about the physical aspects. We also need to educate them about the responsibilities surrounding it and also be able to have the maturity to engage in it.

We need to explain the effects of hormones and emotions in the body and how we are supposed to manage them. We need to teach about the results and consequences, not forgetting the risk of sexually transmitted diseases.

I am lucky that my parents were very open and willing to talk about sex. Whatever important and significant issues and information I needed to know, I got it from them.

Now that I have three children of my own, my wife and I are also quite proactive when it comes to sex education. We talk to them about it from as early as when they were four or five years old and if they have any questions, we are more than willing to answer as best as we can to help them.

Sex – a natural human desire

Critics would be yelling that if we were to provide sex education in schools, it would only encourage the youth to have sex. This has to be the stupidest argument ever against sex education.

Think about it. We don’t have sex education in schools now, so what is spurring the youth to have sex? What, then, do you say about the people who commit violent sexual crimes like rape and abuse? Where did they learn it from? Like it or not, sex is a natural human desire.

At least, if we teach the youth about sex the proper way, then we know that they will be equipped with the right knowledge to be responsible so as not to abuse the situation they are in.

Also, if they are aware of all the issues surrounding sex, they will also be better able to handle risky situations in order to reduce the risk of being abused or taken advantage of.

Remember that sex is a natural human desire and that there is no way we can curb that feeling (hence, abstinence is also an ineffective education strategy). The best step to take is to equip our society with the right knowledge so that we can handle and manage it properly.

So, how about it, Madam Education Minister? Do you think that we can see something drafted so that proper sex education can be implemented? I surely hope so.

[schoolThis article was originally written for and published at Malaysiakini.com]

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