RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On the one hand, a minister with radical ideas, increasingly popular and with little money. On the other, a minister with plenty of resources and a discreet job, caught up in the flood of daily controversies of Jair Bolsonaro’s government.
The campaign for sexual abstinence that Minister Damares Alves intends to launch during the National Week for Pregnancy Prevention in Adolescence, scheduled to take place in the first week of February in partnership with the Ministry of Health, commanded by orthopedic doctor Luiz Henrique Mandetta, has been placing the two ministers on opposite sides.
The Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights (MMFDH) is trying to dictate the guidelines for the action, but the cost of R$3 million will be borne by the Ministry of Health. The ministry headed by the evangelical pastor claims that the early initiation of sexual activity leads to “antisocial or delinquent behavior” and “estrangement from parents, school and faith,” among other outcomes.
Mandetta’s portfolio stated that the campaign should strengthen the autonomy and role of youths on their sexual initiation, providing contraceptive methods. The minister stated that the message of “responsible behavior is valid”, but that “the problem is complex” and “one cannot minimize the discussion and emphasize only that” and that religious issues should not govern the discussion.
Beyond this clash are the alarming numbers of rapes committed against girls under 14, one of the main causes of early pregnancy, according to several experts and studies. The most recent data shows that in 2017 and 2018 a total of 127,585 rapes were recorded, of which 63.8 percent occurred in children under 14.
Minister Damares has also pointed to the increase in cases of sexually transmitted diseases, such as syphilis. In July of last year, the UN pointed out that the contagion of the AIDS virus in Brazil increased 21 percent in eight years, despite the campaigns and therapies offered by the Unified Health System (SUS).
Bolsonaro’s government was criticized for having turned the body in charge of fighting the disease into a department within the Ministry of Health – before, it was a separate department. In practice, this meant that the policy of tackling the virus, taken as a reference in the fight against HIV around the world, lost relevance.
A speech that sounds reasonable and conflicts with reality
In addition to the pregnancy prevention campaign, the MMFDH intends to implement a broader public policy called the National Plan for the Prevention of Premature Sexual Risk, which will also address the “deferral of sexual initiation” as a contraceptive method.
Experts in the field say the strategy is ineffective. It matters little: sexual abstinence is an agenda advocated by broad sectors of the Evangelical Church and ultra-conservative groups that lobby Jair Bolsonaro’s government – and that have been able to implement their ideas in Donald Trump’s United States.
Her speech is at odds with the MMFDH’s technical note that teaching contraceptive methods to young people “normalizes adolescent sex” since not everyone has had sexual initiation. In contrast to Damares once again, the Health Technical Note stated that sex education does not encourage sexual intercourse.
The minister also raised some actual issues in the interview and appealed to common sense: “Early pregnancy is growing absurdly. And more than early pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases. Did you know that we are experiencing a syphilis epidemic? UNICEF has released the report on the average age of sexual initiation in Brazil: it is 13.9 years of age for a girl and 12.4 years for a boy”.
Data on early pregnancy
The numbers and studies show a more complex reality than the one released by Damares. A 2018 report from the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF states that between 1995 and 2000 pregnancy among adolescents between 15 and 19 years old reached its apex, of 83.6 births for every 1,000 women. Between 2010 and 2015, this proportion fell to 68.4 pregnant women, even though this figure is very high compared to the world average of 46 births per 1,000 adolescents, while in Latin America and the Caribbean the average is 66.5 pregnancies.
According to a study by the Ministry of Health, 3.2 million adolescents were mothers in Brazil between 2011 and 2016. Of this total, 95 percent were between the ages of 15 and 19. Pregnancies in girls aged 10 to 14 totaled 162,853 (or about 25,000 per year), a significantly smaller number but still at a very high level.
This reality among younger adolescents can be explained, among several issues, by the fact that girls were also the main victims of rape among adolescents. A total of 49,489 cases of rape against young girls were reported, of which 66.3 percent (32,809) of the victims were between 10 and 14 years old, while 33.7 percent (16,680) were between 15 and 19 years old.
In a 2017 report, UNICEF pointed out “between 40 and 60 percent of adolescent pregnancies result from sexual violence”. “But despite the quantitative and qualitative indicators proving the gravity of the issue, Brazilian literature lacks more in-depth data on this situation,” the text states.
Minister Damares Alves does not dispute this fact and says she advocates sex education in schools, as long as it is worded “in the right way”. In line with feminist movements, she said that “anyone who speaks to a three-year-old child about sexual education should do so in order to empower that child to protect him or herself”.
But once again the speech does not conform with the government’s guidelines: Bolsonaro’s government has vetoed the mention of sex education in UN and WHO documents and has been applauded by ultraconservatives and even Saudis.
Other causes for pregnancy among adolescents
Damares appeals once again to common sense in arguing that Brazil has not fought the “erotization” that has resulted in early sexual initiation of girls.
Once again the reality is more complex. The Ministry of Health’s study also shows that more than 70 percent of adolescent mothers are black and most live in the Northeast and Southeast. They are also the most exposed to sexual violence.
But rape cannot be considered the only cause for the high rate of teenage pregnancy, as the study itself concedes: “Other factors, such as early onset of sexual activity, not living with parents, poverty and neglect, also had a strong association with the occurrence of teenage pregnancy,” the text states.
The UNICEF report further points to four causal “macro factors” for the high rate of early pregnancy: in addition to sexual violence, it points to the “mismatch between sexual desire and risk of pregnancy, which can result in unplanned pregnancy”; the “willingness of motherhood, which results in desired pregnancy”; and the “need for a change in social status, which results in strategic pregnancy”.
In this context it is also important to note the high number of stable unions and marriages among adolescents, a reality for 23.2 percent of girls aged 10 to 14, and 36.8 percent among those aged 15 to 19, recalls the Ministry of Health.
“The challenges in dealing with the bonds of dependence of the family group can lead young people to seek a pseudo-independence, replacing the bonds with their parents with the affective dependence of the couple. The adolescent who lives in a social environment that lacks satisfactory material, financial and emotional resources can see in pregnancy a better prospect for the future, although she may become more vulnerable in this situation,” it explains.
UNICEF places Brazil as the country with the most premature marriages in Latin America and the fourth in the world.