Teens in Brazil
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Brazil has the highest teenage pregnancy rate among all other countries in Latin America. This led the Brazilian government to send a strong message to its teens that they have to stop, reflect, and enjoy their lives without getting pregnant.

The government hopes that one day they can decrease the teen pregnancy rate of the country. The campaign of the government is called "Adolescence First, Pregnancy After." This campaign is run jointly by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Women, Family, and Human Rights. To intensify this program, they used social media to target its audience using the hashtag #tudonoseutempo or "all in good time."

Damares Alves, Minister for Women, Family, and Human Rights, and also an evangelical pastor said: "It didn't come from an insight, from a moment of madness from a fundamentalist minister." She also added, "It's been a year of talking because we need to bring the numbers down. We had the courage to say we are going to talk about delaying the start of sexual relations." 

The move of the government to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies in the country is good news for the growing number of evangelicals. Isabela Prito, 15 years old and part of a youth group at Paz Church in Ttauape, said: "When you have a relationship before getting married, you're connecting with that person and it can come with consequences like pregnancy and illness. So I think you're saving that moment for when you marry when it's very important."

Alves consulted many abstinence groups and organizations in Brazil and one of these is "Eu Escolhi Esperar" or "I Decided to Wait." Although the government did not directly use the term abstinence when they launched their campaign.

Junior said that Alves spoke with him about bringing the same organization from the United States that had never worked, but now she is very optimistic that it will work in Brazil because of her being a minister. When the Junior saw the potential of the campaign of Alves, he was "very happy."

Junior said: "It's logical, not ideological or religious. One thing we need to overcome here in Brazil is this new debate that everything that comes from religion is bad." 

Meanwhile, Danie Sampaio, a doula and a birth support activist and also works with teenage girls in some areas of Sao Paulo's poorest suburbs, said that part of the growing increase of teenage pregnancy is religion.

Vitoria Maria de Oliveira, 20 years old, who is 36 weeks pregnant with her first baby said that she started having sex at the age of 15 and she was not given much information about sex education until she was 16 or 17. She also said that her family does not want to talk about sex. And when she found out that she was pregnant, she was very shocked.

Moreover, Sampaio said that the macho culture and hyper-sexualization in the country are the challenges to bringing the teenage pregnancies down in the country. She said: "We need to talk more with women to break down taboos and beliefs that constrain women, beliefs that are just passed on by their mothers and grandmothers." She added, "abstinence is not the path, information is: understanding your body and saying 'no'."

The government of Brazil said that they will continue their campaign by giving contraceptives and an information drive about sex education. They will also encourage teens to talk with their families and seek health advice.

However, the critics say that much needs to be done regarding sex education in schools.

Helena Bertho, one of the critics, said: "The focus should be on making sex education work better but it's going in the other direction." She added, "they [the government] will not have both [abstinence and sex education] because having both would mean making sex education better. Abstinence is something that you believe in. You shouldn't run a campaign for young people not to have sex, you should educate them to say it's one of the options."