We tell girls to keep their legs closed to avoid teen pregnancy, but never tell the men to keep their hands off children.

While the burden of pregnancy falls on girls, who protects them? The constitution clearly states, “Any sexual act with a child under 18 is defilement.”

When you justify a teacher sleeping with students, you’re an enabler, no better than the defiler.

The rise in teenage pregnancies is alarming.

I support educating girls about consequences, including that their lives change forever while men’s don’t, that there’s no need to rush, and that anyone pressuring them doesn’t love them.

They should focus on studies to build their future. However, let us not clear the predators.

It’s easy to condemn teen pregnancy from a podium, post statistics about rising numbers, and blame poverty or recklessness.

It’s easy when you’ve never sat with a 15-year-old carrying a child she didn’t ask for, bleeding through her uniform during exams, too scared to seek help or face shame for a pregnancy she didn’t cause.

When older people pursue young girls, it’s never a relationship but an abuse of power.

Their age and authority give them emotional, financial, and positional power, while girls are still forming boundaries, making them easy targets for manipulation disguised as love.

Most high schools lack safe spaces for girls.

If a teacher approaches a girl, she won’t speak up to avoid becoming a victim or topic of discussion.

She might even be expelled! Where we take girls for safekeeping becomes hunting grounds for predators.

Teen pregnancy isn’t about teenagers’ mistakes. It’s about adult failures, predators protected by silence and systems, and a society blaming girls for surviving abuse.

We should be angry, heartbroken, and ashamed. And we should do something about it.

Purity Nthiana is a reproductive health Advocate at NAYA Kenya