By Liang Qiwen (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-09-20 07:24

GUANGZHOU: Doctors in South China's Guangdong Province observed an increase in the number of female students visiting hospitals in search of abortions during the weeks leading up to the start of school.

Some hospitals in Dongguan, a city in the province, reported two to three times as many abortion requests in the week before the start of new semester, which began on September 1, than during other times of the year. Fridays and Saturdays are usually the busiest days.

Most of the young girls seeking abortions were between 16 and 22 years old. About half were high school students.

"It has become a routine that the beginning of every new semester is a busy season for the abortion departments of most hospitals," Zhang Yurong, a doctor with the gynecology and obstetrics department of the Guangdong Second Provincial Chinese Medicine Hospital, said.

"It's not just in Dongguan, but all across the province," she said.

She said that because so few students know about birth control, summer flings can often lead to unwanted pregnancies.

An investigation of 20 hospitals in the province by the Guangzhou-based Yangcheng Evening News revealed that the hospitals had performed abortions on 3,000 girls under the age of 18 last year.

About 75 percent of those girls were younger than 23. The youngest one was only 12.

Gao Tianyang, a doctor at Guangdong No 2 Provincial People's Hospital, said some middle school girls did not think much about having sex and did not consider an abortion to be a serious procedure.

She said that even though some people can have healthy babies after having an abortion, some women's menstrual cycles change after undergoing the procedure.

Repeated abortions could lead to sterility, she added.

There are 1.2 million middle school students in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province.

Liang Xuezhen, a family education expert in Guangdong, said it would be impossible for the government, women's federation and schools to give enough guidance about sex to every single student.

Liang said parents should shoulder more of the responsibility for educating their children about sex.