Passaris: Why I put my daughter on birth control drugs at age 16
Nairobi Woman Representative Esther Passaris has opened up on the reason she allowed her daughter be put on birth control at the age of 16.
Passaris explained that she approved the decision in order to protect the girl from having any unplanned pregnancy.
She also did not want her daughter to ever be in a situation where she has to consider whether to abort a pregnancy or not.
Passaris made the remarks in an interview on Thursday morning on Citizen TV.
She said it is time parents start having conversations with their children on sexuality.
“Let me give you an example of my daughter. My daughter at 16 came home and told me her girlfriend is pregnant and she wanted to go for an abortion. Her (my daughter) and friends had decided to raise money to enable her do so.”
She added: “I decided to go and talk to the girl’s guardian and she had a safe abortion. When I looked at my daughter, I then asked myself, my daughter is 16 years old and her friends are already having sex. I had sex at a later age and my parents did not know about.”
This informed her decision to take her daughter to a gynaecologist and put her on birth control drugs.
“I told my gynaecologist to put her on a pill at the age of 16. My daughter asked me why I was putting her on the pill at that age when she was not yet ready to have sex. But I explained that it was not because I want you to have sex, but if you are going to have it I want you to make sure that you do not get pregnant,”
She urged parents to be more realistic and stop treating sex as a taboo subject.