Ahead of her 15th birthday, Diana Zalazar’s body had gotten so big she could no longer squeeze into the dress she bought for her quinceañera to celebrate her passage into womanhood in Paraguay.
Her mother sought help from a doctor, who suspected that growing inside of the 14-year-old Catholic choir girl could be a giant tumor. Next thing Zalazar knew, a gynecologist was wiping down the probe she’d applied to her belly and informing her that she was in her sixth month of pregnancy.
It made no sense to Zalazar, who had recently had sex for the first time without realizing it could make her pregnant.
In Catholic Paraguay, which has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in South America, many young mothers explained their teen pregnancies to The Associated Press as the result of growing up in a country where parents avoid the birds and the bees talk at all costs and national sex education is indistinguishable from a hygiene lesson.
“I didn’t decide to become a mother,” Zalazar said. “I didn’t have a chance to choose because I didn’t have the knowledge.”
I went to an all-boys Catholic highschool. I had a teacher that was a Christian Brother. One day he had an argument with a classmate over how effective condoms were. He basically argued that condoms don’t work. (Even arguing that a Ziploc bag couldn’t keep semen from escaping.)
This teacher was pretty popular because he was a character, who’d sometimes make crude jokes.
After graduating, some friends and a I ran into him at a mall. He asked us “What are you guys up to? Picking up little girls?”
We laughed it off thinking he was still his same old jovial self.
Not long after, I heard that this same teacher had been arrested for being involved with minors. His “joke” that day seemed like some major projection.
even for crude humor that’s just gross.