Teenage pregnancies in Brazil have been stubbornly high for decades, but a range of efforts to tackle this inequality are finally bearing results. Luke Taylor reports For decades Brazil has struggled to bring down its stubbornly high rate of teenage pregnancy. The country has nearly twice as many adolescent births as the average upper middle income nation, and its absolute numbers are enormous owing to a population of 210 million. In 2015 alone 547 000 Brazilian mothers aged under 20 gave birth, 26 000 of them girls under 15.12 Adolescent births are driven by inequality and perpetuate it—so, in a nation as unequal as Brazil, this is one of the country’s largest health and socioeconomic issues. High rates of teenage pregnancy disproportionately affect the poorest communities, where they worsen already limited educational and economic opportunities for young mothers and increase the risk of maternal and infant health complications. Both the covid pandemic and ongoing moves to water down sex education in recent years have sparked fears that Brazil could take a step backwards, leading to more girls getting married, dropping out of school, or losing their lives in clandestine abortion clinics. “It really is a public health crisis,” says Denise Leite Maia Monteiro, who heads the Brazilian Association of Obstetrics and Gynecology for Childhood and Adolescence. “If we want to achieve the [World Health Organization’s] sustainable development goals by 2030 we need to combat inequalities and invest in implementing policies focused on adolescent sexual and reproductive health.” Despite such fears, however, recent figures suggest that Brazil is achieving a remarkable turnaround. The number of births among adolescent girls has halved in just a decade. Some 286 000 Brazilian girls aged 10-19 gave birth in the first half of 2014, but in the same period in 2024 the figure was 141 000. This …

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巴西的青少年怀孕率正在直线下降：其他国家可以从中学到什么？

几十年来，巴西的少女怀孕率一直居高不下，但解决这种不平等问题的一系列努力终于取得了成果。卢克·泰勒 （Luke Taylor） 报道几十年来，巴西一直在努力降低其顽固的高少女怀孕率。该国的青少年出生人数几乎是平均中高收入国家的两倍，而且由于 2.1 亿人口，其绝对数量非常巨大。仅在 2015 年，就有 547 000 名 20 岁以下的巴西母亲分娩，其中 26 000 名是 15 岁以下的女孩。青少年的生育是由不平等驱动的，并使不平等长期存在——因此，在巴西这样一个不平等的国家，这是该国最大的健康和社会经济问题之一。少女怀孕率高对最贫困社区的影响尤为严重，它们使年轻母亲本已有限的教育和经济机会恶化，并增加了孕产妇和婴儿健康并发症的风险。新冠疫情和近年来持续淡化性教育的行动都引发了人们的担忧，即巴西可能会倒退一步，导致更多女孩结婚、辍学或在秘密堕胎诊所失去生命。“这确实是一场公共卫生危机，”巴西儿童和青少年妇产科协会负责人丹尼斯·莱特·马亚·蒙泰罗 （Denise Leite Maia Monteiro） 说。“如果我们想在 2030 年之前实现 [世界卫生组织] 的可持续发展目标，我们就需要打击不平等，并投资于实施以青少年性健康和生殖健康为重点的政策。”然而，尽管存在这些担忧，但最近的数据表明，巴西正在实现显著的转变。少女的出生人数在短短十年内减少了一半。 2014 年上半年，约有 286 000 名 10-19 岁的巴西女孩分娩，但 2024 年同期这一数字为 141 000 名。这。。。