Youth, gender and reproductive justice: health inequities in family planning in brazil’s unified health system

Abstract

Sexual initiation is a gradual process of experimentation and learning the cultural rep-ertoire of gender, reproduction, contraception, sexual violence and other topics surrounding youth sociability. Unlike sexual abstinence-based approaches promoted as a panacea for reducing “early pregnancy” in Brazil, reproductive justice is posited as a framework for addressing health inequities in family planning. This article discuss-es the challenges faced by public health policies in supporting adolescents and young people in their sexual and reproductive trajectories, drawing on the concept of intersectionality. We focus on public institutional initiatives providing long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARC) on the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS) implemented over the last decade. We conducted a documentary anthropological study drawing on empirical data on contraceptive technologies in order to prob-lematize what we call the “selective provision” of these devices and discriminatory and stigmatizing practices. Advocating the expansion of the provision of contraception on the SUS, with universal access to LARC for all women, distances itself from what we call “contraceptive coercion” among specific social groups.