MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine authorities favor sterilization surgery starting at age 16

“From the age of 16 you can have free access to permanent contraceptive methods: ligation and vasectomy,”, says one of the flyers

Argentina's Health Ministry has launched a campaign aimed at enabling teenagers to have access to sterilization procedures such as a vasectomy or a tube ligation from the age of 16, it was reported in Buenos Aires.

The ministry argues that the campaign seeks to allow children to decide on their own bodies, although the treatments are believed to be virtually irreversible.

“From the age of 16 you can have free access to permanent contraceptive methods: ligation and vasectomy,”, says one of the flyers of the propaganda via Twitter, according to Infobae. “The Civil Code recognizes that from the age of 16 you can make autonomous decisions about the care of your body,” it adds. The flyer also encourages children from the age of 13 to go and get information “unaccompanied by adults” -thus, underlined- about contraceptive methods, Infobae also underlined.

The Civil Code also states that “from the age of sixteen, the adolescent is considered an adult for decisions concerning the care of his or her own body.”

Although Infobae underlines that surgical sterilization methods are “intended for people who already have children and are very sure they do not want to have more or for those whose health would be seriously compromised by having them,” it is also true that Argentine authorities financially support gender-reassignment surgery at around the same age.

In Argentina, the birth rate fell to the lowest level in history while the global fertility rate (the number of children per woman) will be 1.54 in 2020, way below the replacement rate of 2.1 which keeps the number of inhabitants of a country stable.

“Reducing the population in a country of 2,780,400 square kilometers and 47 million inhabitants only favors the ambitions of other powers that have already exhausted their natural resources and aspire to exploit those of other areas for their benefit,” Infobae argues. “This explains the desires of certain foreign leaders for the Amazon, which they virtually appropriate by calling it the 'lungs of the world,' or for Patagonia -which they always refer to as an autonomous region-, or for Antarctica, from which they are separated by thousands and thousands of kilometers,” the newspaper goes on.

 

En hospitales públicos, centros de salud, obras sociales y prepagas deben entregar gratis el método anticonceptivo que solicites.

Para más información:
Línea Salud Sexual: 0800 222 3444.

Tu pregunta es confidencial.

— Ministerio de Salud de la Nación (@msalnacion) September 28, 2022