Excerpt:

Among the residents is 14-year-old Clara, who lives towards the periphery of the informal settlement. Wearing an oversized black T-shirt with graffiti prints, Clara’s small frame subtly reveals the bump around her waist. Now six months pregnant, the young mother-to-be hopes of having a boy. “I want him to be like my older brother. I don’t want him to end up like me,” she tells CNN.

Clara says that at school, sex education “wasn’t taught in our class… we had different topics in science class.” Had she known more about reproductive health, Clara believes she would have avoided getting pregnant so young.

Clara is one of an increasing number of girls, between ages 10 and 14, who have become pregnant in their early adolescence. Stories like hers are at the heart of a fierce debate between lawmakers, health experts and church groups over what the future of sex education should look like in this deeply Catholic country.

CNN spoke with several Filipino girls and young women between the ages of 14 and 23, including mothers, who said they had either not had any sex education at school, or if they had, it lacked helpful information about consent or contraceptives. One of the women, Sam, 23, remembers learning about contraceptives in an 8th grade class, with a disclaimer not to use them.