BIOETHICS AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR CRITICIZING PUBLIC POLICIES ON WOMEN'S REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND SEX EDUCATION IN BRAZIL

Abstract

In Brazil, the rate of teenage pregnancy is far above the global average. While the aforementioned global average shows an estimate of 41 girls per thousand, in Latin America it is 62 girls per thousand and, in Brazil, approximately 53 girls become mothers. In the report published by the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), 930 adolescents give birth daily in Brazil. Among these numbers, it is necessary to highlight the average number of abortions performed by adolescents, placing data on teenage pregnancy in a spectrum that is also relevant to women's health issues. Many adolescents begin their sexual life full of fear and misinformation, while such activity should be healthy and should not generate any risk. Therefore, knowledge about sexual health, such as the use of contraceptive methods, for example, becomes extremely important at this stage since, in addition to preventing unwanted pregnancies, it also prevents them from contracting sexually transmitted infections. The World Health Organization (WHO) points out that the numbers regarding teenage pregnancy could be avoided through sex education and information about the correct use of effective contraceptive methods. Therefore, this article used the bibliographic and documental research modality, aiming to analyze the official documents concerning female reproductive health and sex education in Brazil in the last 5 years (2016-2021) seeking to find correlations between documents referring to public policies and statistical data on female reproductive health, using bioethics as a critical theoretical framework. As a result, it was possible to verify the effectiveness of public policies on female reproductive health and sex education towards mitigating the high rate of pregnancies that occur in adolescence.