HAY-WEBSTER... proposes to sterilise women with three children.

OPPOSITION parliamentarian, Ernie Smith, yesterday proposed virginity tests on schoolgirls, while government member Sharon Hay-Webster suggested the compulsory sterilisation of young women who have at least three children as part of a strategy to fight unwanted pregnancies and poverty in Jamaica.

The recommendations are likely to prove highly controversial, especially among gender activists. But there was no immediate response last night by groups which usually speak on such issues.

SMITH... says girls should be tested before returning to school.

The parliamentarians made their suggestions to the backdrop of a debate in the House on the recently-released Keating Report pointing to sexual and other abuse in children's homes and places of safety and calling for urgent reform in the system. Initially, the Opposition sought to call for a censure and firing of Health Minister John Junor, but they compromised yesterday, settling for a resolution calling for urgent government action to fix the problem.

Smith, a lawyer, raised the idea of the virginity tests while providing broad support for Hay-Webster, who had expressed concern about a breakdown of family life and values, and the growing number of young people who had gone through multiple pregnancies. She urged community support to strengthen social values.

Claiming -- erroneously government members pointed out -- that "60 per cent of all child births are by girls 16 years and under", Smith had declared his support for Hay-Webster's assertion that the society needed to find a solution to the problem of teenage pregnancies.

Challenged on the prevalence of teenage pregnancies, Smith, who represents South East St Ann, responded: "Even if the instances of child birth to teenagers 16 and under is less than 60 per cent, the problem is still a big one, so I am suggesting that something be done about it.

"I am proposing mandatory medical examinations of all schoolgirls returning to school to determine if their virginity is still intact. This medical examination for 'virgo intacta' should be carried out at the same time as other regular medical checks carried out by schools."

Smith did not go on to say what should be done regarding girls found to have lost their virginity.

But he added: "It is against the law for men to engage in sexual intercourse with girls under the age of 16. When it is found that this has happened, investigations are to proceed in order to find those lawbreakers and bring them to justice. There is a girls' home in St Ann's Bay that I know of that every month there are cases of sexual abuse and sexual activity involving them... Such things must stop."

Earlier, Hay-Webster, the MP for South Central St Catherine, had called for "a national partnership to combat the problems facing children" and as for backing for Prime Minister P J Patterson's 'Values and Attitudes' campaign to "build a kinder, gentler society".

But she suggested that dealing with these issues were particularly difficult in an environment where the problems were compounded by young people, with no skills and little education having already gone through several pregnancies and were themselves becoming grandparents. She cited a case of a 26 year-old she know of who was about to become a grandmother.

"The situation is getting to the stage where we may have to make it mandatory for young mothers to undergo tubal ligation after their third or fourth pregnancy," Hay-Webster said.

Tubal ligation is a process of sterilisation, by a simple operation, where the tubes carrying eggs to a woman's uterus, are permanently blocked. This procedure also prevents sperm from reaching the uterus.

Hay-Webster had argued that the "the state cannot cope with the responsibility of so many unwanted child births" and often the burden fell to others, including politicians.

"Members of parliament like myself find that we are taking care of people in the constituency from the womb to the tomb," she said. "The churches may disagree with this proposal but the situation is very grim. That is why our children's services is so overburdened."

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