Is “sex in crisis” in Venezuela?

Last updated on: November 30, 2017 at 12:32 pm by Jane the Actuary

Is “sex in crisis” in Venezuela? 2017-11-30T12:32:22-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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That’s the headline at the Washington Post today: “Even sex is in crisis in Venezuela, where contraceptives are growing scarce.”

The report, in many respect, is “old news” — two years ago, a spate of articles described the lack of contraception in the country (e.g., Breitbart, as a non-paywalled version) due to the economic crisis, and earlier this year, papers reported on the increasing degree to which women sought out sterilization (here, from the Miami Herald). Three years ago, the report was on the shockingly-high rate of teen pregnancies, cited at Reuters as “one of the worst in South America” with 23% of all births being from under-18 year olds, as a store mannequin display showed pregnant teen girl mannequins to draw attention to the issue, and this appeared to be a longstanding cultural issue, not as a result of any shortages in government-supplied contraceptives.

The pro-government website Venezuelanaysis reported in 2015 that the government was preparing to provide 18 million condoms in that year, provided by the United Nations Population Fund, and claimed that shortages were caused by “hoarding” by private companies. Did this happen? No idea.

And, with respect to the economic and political situation in Venezuela in general, there have been dramatic reports from the country for quite a while now; back last year, I expressed skepticism that the economy would lead to Maduro being forced out of power.

What’s really going on? The most recent data for the birth rate is from 2015, and shows no disruption in the ongoing trend of decreases in birth rates from year to year. Are there increases in unplanned pregnancies being balanced out by decreases in planned pregnancies? So far as I can tell, the data isn’t available.

Which brings us to today’s Washington Post article, which is, fundamentally, a chaotic, disorganized, anecdotal piece of reporting.

The article starts by featuring a couple who were unable to acquire birth control pills, decided that going without sex wasn’t an option, “tried to be careful,” but became pregnant. (What does “try to be careful” mean? It’s not like driving a car, where, in the absense of well-functioning brakes you can “try to be careful” with slowing down well in advance of intersections. Was this an exceptionally-uncurious reporter? Was the couple actually practicing withdrawal?)

The article continues by saying that Venezuelans are having sex despite lack of contraceptives and that doctors report (without firm statistics) an increase in unwanted pregnancies and STDs as a result. Irritatingly, despite being a nominally Catholic country, the only mention of Natural Family Planning (which, even if not for religious reasons, you’d think would be a bigger part of the country’s reaction to shortages) is a statement that

Mainstream media outlets have published articles about the “counting method” of contraception that women can use to calculate when they are ovulating and likely to get pregnant.

though, to be sure, since this is a crummy article, one wonders whether there is more NFP education happening than just reports on calendar rhythm.

Women purchase contraceptives on the black market, or get them when friends travel abroad. Three-packs of condoms costs the equivalent of several days’ minimum-wage pay; a month’s supply of birth control pills cost 1/3 of a month’s minimum-wage pay. The cheap brands of condoms available are reportedly unreliable — though, at the same time, the article reports that men generally refused to use condoms anyway, and yet, STD rates have increased. (A doctor reports that she now sees 5 or 6 of every 10 patients having STDs, vs. 1 of 10 in the past — are these numbers reliable, or does this mean that she sees fewer patients for other reasons, e.g., pregnancy visits?)

It’s all a bit of a jumble. What’s really going on? To be honest, I don’t have the time, nor the language skills, to dig into the shortages in Venezuela, whether this particular shortage is persistent and ongoing, and how it’s impacting fertility statistics. But the story that the Post tells seems incomplete. One presumes that, a population accustomed to contraceptives, but sufficiently acquainted with the basics of how reproduction works, would do more than just hunt down black market supplies and forgo their next grocery-shopping trip — or rather, would do less, changing their behavior accordingly, whether by using natural methods, or refraining entirely, or reducing the frequency to, say, special occasions. In fact, I rather assumed that “sex” being in crisis was a reference to exactly this. And it may be that this is exactly what is happening, to a large extent, anyway, but that’s not what the reporter chose to see.

Image: from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AOpened_Oral_Birth_Control.jpg

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