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Teenage pregnancy has a high socioeconomic impact. The objective of this research was to interpret the meanings of sexuality and pregnancy of girls under 15. An interpretive qualitative study from the phenomenological approach of Alfred Schütz over common sense was carried out. 18 life stories were written with girls under 15 years who had pregnancy experiences in the cities of Bogota, Cali, Cartagena and Medellin. The meanings of menarche, the sexual onset, marriage, contraceptive use and delivery care are influenced by the social and institutional moral agency. The moral enterprise circulates through the spaces of socialization of teenagers: mothers, fathers, homes, institutions and professionals in the health and education sector which classify according to their common sense what is right or "normal" for teenage girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of the science of eugenics in creating hygiene programs on the Caribbean coast of Colombia in the early twentieth century. Eugenic ideas about racial decline, in particular the role of blacks in that presumed decline, inspired projects that envisioned promoting the health and cleanliness of coastal people in order to eliminate their perceived biological and cultural contamination. Much of the desire to racially improve the Caribbean, both the coast itself and the lower Magdalena River, arose from the region's position as the country's gateway to the world (and its markets). The eugenic goal of racial renovation was also moral in nature, and much of the hygiene movement on the coast focused on the uplift and productivity of the region's working-class population. Although the health and sanitation programs were designed ostensibly to convey greater unity to Colombia after the disorders and malaise brought on by the War of a Thousand Days and separation of Panama, the racial and moral impulse behind these programs merely reinforced pre-existing cultural divisions within the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]