Adolescent sexual and reproductive health is a field beset with a number of controversies, ranging from whether and to what kind of sexuality education young people should be exposed to whether teenagers should be able to decide on abortion without parental consent. It is within these controversies as well as local social dynamics that public sexual and reproductive health interventions aimed at adolescents take place. I start this chapter with an outline of the major global public health approach to adolescent sexual and reproductive health: the health and human rights framework. I then briefly overview some of the key issues concerning sexuality education, contraception, pregnancy, abortion, HIV, and lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) issues amongst adolescents, concentrating on questions surrounding taken-for-granted assumptions and health injustices. With this as a backdrop, I argue for a sexual and reproductive justice approach that draws from transnational feminism. Such an approach would focus on health injustices, analyze gendered power relations that cohere around sexuality and reproduction amongst adolescents, highlight the intersectionality of race, class, location, religion, ability and sexual orientation in health outcomes, and deconstruct normative frameworks and taken-for-granted assumptions.
You can access the chapter in the International Handbook on Adolescent Health and Development: The Public Health Response