Abortion in Brazil is legal if the pregnancy puts the life of the woman in danger or if the pregnancy is the result of a rape. There is also an exception when the fetus has a usually fatal brain abnormality called anencephaly. On April 12, 2012, the Supreme Federal Court ruled by an 8-2 vote to legalize abortion in cases of fetuses with anencephaly, saying that it was not about a potential life because an anencephalic fetus would certainly die and never become a person. Religious anti-abortion movements criticized the decision of the court, saying that anencephalic fetuses also had a right to life.
The punishment for a woman who performs an abortion on herself or consents to an abortion performed by another outside these legal exceptions is one to three years of detention. The penalty for the doctor that performs an illegal abortion, ranges from one to four years of detention, with the possibility of increase by a third if the woman comes to any physical harm, and can be doubled if she dies.
In November 2016, a Supreme Court justice wrote that criminalizing first-trimester abortions violated women’s fundamental rights, a decision that granted the habeas corpus release of two people accused of running an abortion clinic. After the decision, Congress created a special commission to clarify the law. It has proposed amending Brazil’s constitution to state that protections for life begin at conception. The suggested amendment was described as a complete abortion ban.
Data show that an estimated 400,000 to 800,000 women have an abortion each year in Brazil and the problem is that most of them are illegal. According to Health Ministry statistics, more than 200 women died in 2015 after abortions. More than 170 women, including prominent actresses, directors, and academics, have signed a manifesto declaring publicly that they had abortions. Brazilian women decided to break taboo and their silence and to talk about illegal abortions because it is something that absolutely must be changed in the largest country in Latin America. When the Anis-Bioethics Institute, an NGO that conducts research on women’s issues, put out a call on Facebook asking for women to tell their stories, 110 came forward in just 19 days.
“We have stopped thinking of this as a private subject. It’s a public subject,” said Rosangela Talib, a coordinator for Catholics for Choice, a leading advocate in Brazil for reproductive rights.
Rebeca Mendes, a Brazilian woman who was seeking an abortion, joined forces with NGO to put a name and a face to a request to legalize abortion. They filed an urgent request with the Supreme Court to terminate Mendes’ pregnancy but the petition was denied and Mendes eventually had the procedure legally in Colombia.
A Datafolha survey released December 31 said 36 percent of Brazilians interviewed were in favor of decriminalizing abortion, up from 23 percent in 2016. But 57 percent were still against abortions. The survey interviewed over 2,700 people from 192 municipalities in Brazil and had a margin of error of two percentage points.
Conservative laws on abortion could only lead to an even higher rate of illegal abortions in Brazil and instead of helping women and society in general, such rules are counterproductive. That’s why it’s a good thing that Brazilian women began to talk openly about abortions and to try to demystify the procedure. Because, “A woman only has an abortion because she needs to,” according to Mendes, a 42-year-old food activist.
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