In an alarming turn, the national government has decided dismiss more than 600 professionals from the ENIA Plan, announce its “redesign” and end rental contracts for work spaces in several provinces. This defunding is not only a blow to public health, but also a setback in human rights and gender equality, fundamental pillars of the feminist struggle.
What is the real motivation behind this decision? Why does the Government choose to discontinue such a successful and regionally recognized public policy?
He National Plan for the Prevention of Unintentional Pregnancy in Adolescents (ENIA) is a public policy that was born in 2018, during the government of Mauricio Macri, to respond to the high rates of adolescent fertility, which managed to transcend his administration, maintaining during the government of Alberto Fernandez.
It began being carried out in various jurisdictions of 12 provinces of the NOA and NEA and the province of Buenos Aires, prioritized by the magnitude of the problem. Finally, in 2023, it had the signing of an Adhesion Agreement between the Nation and the remaining provinces and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires to carry out its implementation throughout the national territory. The reason? Since its launch in 2018, it has managed to reduce unintentional teenage pregnancy in the country by 50%.
It is estimated that, in 2018, 7 out of every 10 teenage pregnancies between 15 and 19 years old were unintentional and the figure increases to 8 out of every 10 pregnancies in girls under 15 years old, the majority as a result of situations of sexual abuse and rape. . By 2021, these statistics were reduced to 5 out of every 10 pregnancies in adolescents aged 15 to 19, while in those under 15 years of age the figure dropped to 7 out of 10 (UNFPA and Ministries of Health, Education and Social Development 2021).
Added to the obvious results of these statistics is the fact that the prevention of teenage pregnancy allows the National State to save 0.16% of GDP if the costs associated with pregnancy care and childbirth in girls and adolescents are taken into account. 10 to 19 years old.
Furthermore, it has been shown that motherhood at an early age is one of the most important determinants of the intergenerational reproduction of poverty, with negative impacts on the life trajectories of adolescent girls linked to school dropout, job placement possibilities and access to to quality work, then why defund it?
Probably because through ENIA Not only is unintentional pregnancy in adolescence reduced. Counseling is also provided in schools and community spaces in comprehensive sexual education, it has a comprehensive and intersectoral perspective and improves the offer of sexual and reproductive health services, enhances informed decisions of adolescents for the exercise of their sexual and reproductive rights, prevents abuse and sexual violence and informs about the possibility of access to voluntary and legal interruption of pregnancy. During the Covid-19 pandemic, it came to attend and provide answers to problems associated with the context of the pandemic and mental health approaches in adolescents.
It is known that the president has spoken out against the Comprehensive Sexual Education which he called “indoctrination and gender ideology” and the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy Law which he referred to as the “bloody agenda of abortion,” then this decision does not seem like a coincidence and is in complete contrast to the declarations of “long live freedom.” What freedom are we talking about if the possibility of adolescents being able to make autonomous and informed decisions about their health and life path is restricted?
If we remember that through The Omnibus Law It was intended to introduce reforms to the Thousand Day Plan Law, in which the paradigm of human rights and autonomy was eliminated for the protection of the rights of women and other people with the capacity to gestate, disappearing all reference to progressive autonomy. of girls and adolescents as well as pregnant people in general, we easily notice a series of policies and reforms aimed at undermining the rights of women, girls and adolescents.
If we cross that with the results of the MILENA studio, which shows that women who were teenage mothers have a lower probability of completing their secondary education, that they stay longer at home dedicated to domestic and care work, and that they are more affected by unemployment, the ideal of women in Their role as “mother woman”, “housewife woman” or “caregiver woman” that they want to impose, progressively restricts the possibility that women, adolescents and girls can autonomously decide their life project.
It would seem that the answer to why defund the ENIA Plan It is obvious.
In the last 41 years of democracy, women and diversities we have fought to achieve many rights. He ENIA Plan It is one of those achievements that will have to be defended and sustained.
Because we are referring to much more than avoiding the emptying or defunding of one of the most successful and recognized Argentine public policies at the regional level, it is also defending the rights to autonomy of girls, adolescents and women to choose their life project.
Source: Ambito
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