While giving a speech to the Rotary Club of East Nassau on Friday, April 11th, 2008, Dr. Davidson Hepburn mentioned that the percentage of births to single mothers last year in the Bahamas was 6 of every 10.
I knew that the figure is high but to learn that it is now the majority is a very frightening statistic but what I personally find even more alarming is that while what the politicians are allegedly doing in the back seat of cars and any other sip-sip that can sell newpapers can get headlines, this horrible statisitic of births is going on almost unnoticed.
I have also been reliably informed that in the school at Harbour Island there are twelve girls under the age of 15 who are now pregnant. I have to wonder what kind of two-legged animals are free to roam the island.
I recall, many years ago, Mr. Mike Smith, in a talk to the Rotary Club of East Nassau, mentioned that when he was growing up he thought that young girls having babies for anyone who showed them some attention was a result of ignorance but he later realized that girls were going off to college, returning home and doing the same thing.
Have we in the Bahamas become so insensitive and so lacking in shame that there is not a public outcry about this prescription for socio-economic disaster?