Análise histórica das políticas de planejamento familiar no Brasil

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to elaborate a historical overview of Brazilian state family planning policies within the complex socio-political period from 1980 to the present. By resorting to related literature and official documents, influences and interests on family planning programs are examined in their inter-relation with population, women, and health policies. After a brief recollection of women and feminist movements, who were central actors in the debate on population and family planning policies, the analysis focuses the drastic reduction in fertility rates in the country from the 1960s on, when the state, while holding a natalism official policy, overlooked the spreading of birth control agencies all over the country, which made sterilization and the pill available to women. The evolution of population policies is followed in parallel, underlining the United Nations world conferences, particularly the International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo in 1994, which drew an inflection on women s health policies onto reproductive health . Its echoes in Brazil added up to the pioneering program on women s health Paism (1983), to the definition of family planning in the country s Constitution of 1988, and to the institution of the national Health System in 1990. The analysis allowed to identifying foreign and internal pressures acting upon family planning policies. The country s current family planning policy may be said to be a democratic, far-reaching and decentralised one, where the main tension lies on the gap between its statement and its practical implementation which can only be overcome by an effective social control.