Complication from pregnancy is the leading cause of death in 15-19 year old girls, and second in 10-14, only because many of them are not yet able to conceive. We have excellent data on this.
Later marriage/first pregnancy is clearly a good thing.
When I looked up causes of death in Nigeria, malaria blew away anything maternal related[]. Not that I would want to die of either.
Another big one was HIV/AIDS. I guess it depends on cultural factors whether early marriage might reduce the number of partners that could introduce HIV/aids. If non-married people are less monogamous it's conceivable the increased risk of HIV/AIDS could overpower the risks of whatever additional childbirth is associated with marriage.
Also note pollution was one of the bigger risks present in Nigeria. So as people get educated to go slave away in a dirty factory (or a city full of them where educated people work) it might actually be worse for their health than staying at home and marrying into some pastoral herding tribe or something.
And more roads means more pollution. It is questionable if the answer is “make everyone dependent on cars”, although doing so obviously improves some outcomes.
Even if true, your "leading cause of death" statement is meaningless as young women are not generally going to die from any other cause. If you "solve" teenage pregnancy, it might well become swallowing food without chewing.
I bet pregnancy is not the "leading cause of death" among 80yo women. That must be the best age to start having children.
Anyways, I couldn't find the reference to your statement by following the link but I found that risk of pre–eclampsia(only clearly stated risk to the mother) and lower birth weight is higher than in 20–24 —no mention of other age ranges.
The report mentions that adolescent childbirth is correlated with low socio–economic status and education. Did they control for that when doing the risk assessment? It is not clear.
No mention of genetic risk to the offspring. No mention of the lives of the offspring that were "terminated" in the making of the non–pregnancy statistics.
Just some vague "abuse" statements that do not include figures for abuse of non–female young people.
Beyond rare risk of death to the mother, I think the health of the child to be born and the potential for younger siblings is an important consideration since we are talking about reproduction.
In Europe, marriage and pregnancies below 18 were rare and people did use to average 21 before "female education" as well but other cultures differed and differ and I don't know to what extent it is appropriate to have "global" organizations mess with their reproductive lives from a Western perspective whether it has 1820s views or 2020s views.
They are included in the statistics for "high risk" adolescent pregnancy in gp's reference which I take as a condemnation of both adult and minor teenage pregnancies and pregnancies in general.
The value judgement is saying the changes you want are worth doing because they might reduce it. Social and personal choices are weighed all the time that include risks to lives, suggesting something that might reduce risk does not end the debate.
We would generally want to prevent people dying in horrible aviation disasters too, we could do that by ceasing non essential air travel.
If the value that the “other side” is espousing is that “it’s okay for girls to die giving birth”, well, we can safely discount that as a valid position to hold in modern society.
I believe nothing is *absolutely bad* in modern society.
For example, the best way to stop pregnancy-related deaths is to forcely termination any high-risk pregnancy regardless of the pregnant woman's own wishes. But seems no one would agree.
Sure, but this provides an argument for postponing marriage (and educating women) at least a little even if you want to coldly maximize birthrate with no regards to their feelings.
Another big one was HIV/AIDS. I guess it depends on cultural factors whether early marriage might reduce the number of partners that could introduce HIV/aids. If non-married people are less monogamous it's conceivable the increased risk of HIV/AIDS could overpower the risks of whatever additional childbirth is associated with marriage.
Also note pollution was one of the bigger risks present in Nigeria. So as people get educated to go slave away in a dirty factory (or a city full of them where educated people work) it might actually be worse for their health than staying at home and marrying into some pastoral herding tribe or something.
[] https://ourworldindata.org/profile/health/nigeria