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.

[] https://ourworldindata.org/profile/health/nigeria

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.

WHO, indeed.

It's clear to you but that's still a value judgement. It's not as clear if you discount female autonomy.

I completely agree, but there's a decent chunk of people out there who don't.

Lets stop pretending there is an agreement that pain or harm to girls matters.