EDITOR: September 14, 2016, a video of members of a Vincentian community who retrieved a newborn baby from a latrine, where the mother had discarded it, went viral on social media. Many individuals are calling the mother wicked. Some said that she denied her pregnancy continuously and at the end, when the baby was born, she discarded it like bodily waste.{{more}}

Vincentians like to boast that they are Christians, but this only seems to be in name only, because the actions of many Vincentians are far from what is deemed Christian. It is time for Vincentian mothers to start thinking pragmatically. They need to talk to their daughters about sex. Storks and airplanes don’t deliver babies. Babies come through one basic method, the merger of the female’s egg and the male’s sperm, usually via sex. None of us mothers want to think that our daughters are sexually active. The fact is, St Vincent and the Grenadines and the entire Caribbean for that matter, have an extremely sexual culture. Sex is in the music, in the Carnival, even in the rhythm of the rivers and oceans; so, as much as we would like to deny it, sex occupies a central place in our minds full time.

Therefore, it is imperative for mothers to educate their children, but more particularly their daughters, since they are the ones often left with the burden, about sex. They need to take them to the clinics and put them on a birth control regimens as soon as they start menstruation. They need to ensure that they understand the implications of incurring a pregnancy, but also contracting sexually transmitted diseases. Thus, they also need to ensure that they always have condoms with them, just in case they have a sexual encounter.

The young ladies must be taught that they must not, under any circumstance, unless it is a situation of rape, whereby they lack control, engage in sex without a condom. They must view any male who refuses to wear a condom as a potential killer. I know this sounds a little extreme, but the situation in St Vincent and the Grenadines with unwanted pregnancies and HIV/AIDS is an extreme case, which warrants extreme measures. We cannot guarantee that our sexual partners are not having sex with other individuals, especially in our culture where womanizing results in heroic worship. So, women must insist that the men wrap it up. Sparrow said “no money, no love.” It’s time to amend that mantra to “no condom, no sex.”

Helena R Edwards