All children, adolescents and young people have the right to make their own free and informed choices and to have control over their sexual and reproductive health and lives, free from coercion, violence, discrimination, and abuse. When young people are empowered to make decisions over their lives and bodies through comprehensive sexuality education and access to reproductive health services, the impacts are significant.
Open, comprehensive, and factual sexual and reproductive health care and education fosters a positive, respectful, and responsible approach to sexuality and relationships.
It allows young people to discover the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences free of coercion, discrimination, and violence.
It allows young people to discover the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences free of coercion, discrimination, and violence.
Sexual and reproductive health and rights continues to be a major challenge in the Latin American region with persisting maternal mortality, teenage pregnancy, and neonatal mortality. The adolescent pregnancy rate in Latin America and the Caribbean is 66.5 births per thousand girls between the ages of 15 and 19. Considering comparative data from 2019, infant mortality per 1,000 live births was 10.1 in Ecuador, 13.1 in Mexico and 25.2 in Paraguay. Furthermore, the maternal mortality ratio for 2017 per 100,000 live births was estimated at 59 in Ecuador, 33 in Mexico, and 84 in Paraguay.
in terms of SRHR, there are still huge setbacks and disparities in access to health care. Maternal mortality, teenage pregnancy, severe bleeding, hypertension, pregnancy-related infections, complications due to unsafe abortions, and conditions such as HIV/AIDS are some of the problems that persist in the public health system. Community-centered primary health care can and should address the needs of women, girls, and adolescents and facilitate equitable access to crucial services, such as deliveries, antenatal and postnatal care, obstetric emergencies, nutrition, family planning, and so on. However, underfunding of the primary health care systems, lack of trained health care workers, and weak medical supply chains jeopardize timely, respectful, and high-quality access to services. These difficulties make it impossible for women, girls, and gender-diverse people to access quality sexual and reproductive health services through the public health system.
the SRHR regulatory framework has been strengthened in recent years, with important advances in terms of abortion, marriage equality, and recognition of gender identities. For example, during the reporting period, the decriminalization of abortion was approved in the state of Quintana Roo (increasing the total to 11 states where abortion is legal during the first trimester of pregnancy), eliminating the requirement of a police report in order to access abortion in cases of rape, and including the term for pregnant people as “any person with female reproductive system and therefore with the capacity to gestate”. In addition, judicial injunctions were filed in other states to decriminalize abortion. Even with these advances, widespread access remains a challenge, particularly for women and people with the capacity to become pregnant who face multiple discriminations, due to lack of infrastructure and supplies, few trained personnel, and conscientious objectors, as well as the lack of knowledge about how to access abortion care. Additionally, despite the ruling by the Mexican Supreme Court recognizing the right to abortion and terming the refusal of abortion access as an act of torture, access to abortion medication and services are still not comprehensive and remain restricted in some places, such as Jalisco where the penal code establishes up to 2 years in prison for women who voluntarily have an abortion. Furthermore, even though the State implemented the document “Technical Guidelines for Safe Abortion Care” in Mexico, as well as the Safe Abortion Services Program through the Ministry of Health, these are not implemented in most health facilities. For example, Campeche implementation was stopped due to lack of budget.
the State recognizes and guarantees the right to SRHR as fundamental rights for all persons as stipulated in the national legal framework. These rights include safe motherhood, equality and non-discrimination, access to information and education, free and informed decisions on the number of children to have, quality care, prenatal and postnatal care, attention to obstetric emergencies, nutrition, family planning, the benefits of scientific progress, prevention, and attention of violence, among others. Care and access to family planning information and methods are also free in the public sector, but there is a constant shortage of modern methods.
