The country woke up Boxing Day to pictures of a 14-year-old girl being feted for having the first-born — twins — on Christmas Day 2022, a celebrated position which Jamaicans have come to embrace.

For sure, the birth of twins to a teenage mother doesn’t occur every day, or even every year, but no one can be surprised that babies are born to teenage mothers pretty much every day.

What was surprising was the explosion of outrage, mostly on social media, sparked by the news.

The question is why? For, as we said, the celebration of the first-born on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day passes without the slightest fanfare these days.

In this case, the mother has little or no control over birthing twins, beyond deciding to carry the foetuses to term.

Those whose conscience has been pricked by the adolescent having been impregnated are on to something. It is the female who will always be at the centre of the issue. Indeed, we might never know who the father is.

For that matter, we are encouraged by her intention to go back to school to continue her education. Without an education, and in our Jamaican context, the young girl could likely be on her way to a life of deeper poverty and a cycle of misery that could carry over to her children.

Jamaica has the third-highest adolescent pregnancy rate in Latin America and the Caribbean, a rate that could well have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the closure of schools, according to Dr Denise Chevannes of the United Nations Population Fund.

Experts believe that the closure of schools will cause higher drop-out rates among girls. That interruption is also likely to increase domestic responsibilities for girls, forcing them to fend for themselves or to assist their family by forming sexual relationships with older men.

Thankfully, Jamaica is well served by the 44-year-old Women’s Centre, whose centrepiece is the acceptance of pregnant girls who are allowed to continue their education. We are also fortunate to have the State-run Technical Support to Reduce Teenage Pregnancy project.

The Government had announced plans to spend approximately $7.9 million on the project during the 2021/2022 fiscal year. The project is being implemented by the National Family Planning Board and funded by the Inter-American Development Bank. One can only hope that the money was not secretly diverted to some other project.

Some of the laudable objectives include contributing to the reduction in adolescent pregnancy rates in Jamaica; impacting adolescent sexual and reproductive health behaviour change among adolescent boys and girls; and increasing access to sexual and reproductive health services and commodities for adolescents.

Anticipated physical targets for the 2021/2022 fiscal year include continuing the provision of contraceptive commodities to adolescent mothers and facilitating project audit and closure.

There should be no temptation to spend the money elsewhere because the pandemic has already caused limited access to contraceptives and other family planning services which can result in an unplanned pregnancy.

We, of course, hope that the teenage mother and her twins will escape the ravages of poverty that have beset so many of her peers before her.