New WHO Guidance Calls for Injectable Contraceptives for Kids

By and Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.

NEW YORK, May 23 (C-Fam) The World Health Organization (WHO) released a new guideline on preventing adolescent pregnancies in low and middle-income countries. The proposed framework advances a vision of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for young people that promotes controversial ideas, and norm changes inconsistent with what governments have agreed to.

Revised for the first time in over a decade, the guideline focuses almost exclusively on preventing adolescent pregnancies through increased and prolonged contraception use, including “self-administered injectable contraception,” and access to sexuality education.

In its recommendations, the WHO frames adolescents’ choice to discontinue “contraceptive use due to side-effects, and due to changing life circumstances and reproductive intentions” in a negative light and as an obstacle to overcome.

The framework calls on mobilizing “[p]olitical, governmental, religious, traditional and other influential leaders” to “support the access to, uptake of, and continued use of contraceptives.”

The guideline also asks policymakers to ensure that laws on age and consent related to sexual activities are designed in such a way as to promote adolescents’ access to contraception. Such a move could mean lowering the age of legal consent or making regulations more flexible to enable young people’s access to contraception without stigma.

Critics note that an exclusive focus on mass contraceptive use among adolescents monopolizes the discourse on how to best prevent adolescent pregnancies and undermines efforts to tackle the problem holistically.

The 112-page guideline does not mention the merits of raising awareness about the negative consequences of nonmarital sexual behavior through programs centered around abstinence and delay of sexual debut.

Critics also disagree with the WHO framing adolescents’ opposition to contraceptives due to side effects or religious beliefs as based on myths and misinformation.

Beyond its recommendations on contraceptives, the guideline promotes adolescents’ access to sex education, saying that “[m]any adolescents are unaware…[on how] to have sex safely and pleasurably.”

The document references the latest UN inter-agency technical guidance on comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), which has helped shape sexuality education curricula and materials in many countries around the world.

The technical guidance dedicates an entire section to the “Social Construction of Gender and Gender Norms,” teaching children aged 5-8 the difference between biological sex and gender and encouraging them to “reflect on how they feel about their biological sex and gender.” The same section says children aged 9-12 should be able to “explain how someone’s gender identity may not match their biological sex” and “acknowledge that masturbation does not cause physical or emotional harm.”

Another goal laid out in the CSE guidance is that children aged 12- 15 are able to state that sexual “fantasies and desires are natural and not shameful and occur throughout life.”

The WHO guideline on preventing adolescent pregnancies is prefaced with the notion that “the global community has reaffirmed its commitment to advancing adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).”

UN member states have not affirmed such a commitment. SRHR is a controversial term at the UN and has never been agreed to by consensus. Its imprecise and controversial interpretation by the UN system does not enjoy support from socially conservative countries who routinely dissociate from any SRHR references.

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