Abortion: Pro-choice Forces in Brazil Are Being Threatened by Christian Radicals and the Ultra-right

BY ANDREA DIP
DECEMBER 10, 2023

Brazil’s Supreme Court has postponed a debate on decriminalizing early-term abortion, leading feminists and rights advocates to warn that the justices will be responsible for the deaths of more women and girls in the country.

Abortion in the country is punishable by up to three years in prison, and is allowed on only three grounds: rape, risk to the life of the pregnant person, and – following a 2012 Supreme Court decision – when the fetus suffers anencephaly, a fatal birth defect.

Continued: https://www.brazzil.com/abortion-pro-choice-forces-in-brazil-are-being-threatened-by-christian-radicals-and-the-ultra-right/

‘The time is now’: Inside Brazil’s fight to decriminalize abortion

Women will die due to far right’s attack on Supreme Court that has made decriminalization unlikely, activists say

Andrea Dip
5 December 2023

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/brazil-fight-abortion-decriminalize-supreme-court-lula-justice-weber-barroso/

Underground Activists in Brazil Fight for Women’s Reproductive Rights

While abortion has long been aggressively criminalized in Brazil, in the past few years, anti-abortion zeal has reached a fever pitch. In response, abortion activist networks support and guide women through at-home procedures.

October 23, 2021
Alejandra Marks

Last month, when Taís Oliveira* found out she was pregnant, she got in her car and cried. A single mother living in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, Taís had promised herself she would never raise a child alone again. The next day she began her search for an abortion. Under President Jair Bolsonaro’s radically anti-choice government, however, obtaining one through either legal or illegal means would be difficult. With scores of religious conservatives in Congress and at the helm of the public agencies, anti-abortion surveillance pervades.

Continued: https://portside.org/2021-10-23/underground-activists-brazil-fight-womens-reproductive-rights

From Herrera to Herrera: women against the patriarchy in El Salvador
The current climate of anti-abortion zealotry fosters brutal regimes that persecute and torture people such as Manuela, who died while imprisoned for having a miscarriage

DEBORA DINIZ, GISELLE CARINO
12 MAR 2021

The voice that conveyed the information to Morena Herrera, from El Salvador,
was foreign. “There are women who have been imprisoned for abortion,” the voice
said, “and they’ll stay there for 30 years or more.” Herrera could not believe
what she was hearing; under the criminal code, abortion carried a maximum
sentence of eight years. Why such long prison terms? Morena Herrera asked the
speaker, Donna Ferrato, how she knew about these women. Ferrato had just
finished a photo essay for The New York Times on the criminalization of
abortion in El Salvador, and she had heard the story from the imprisoned women
themselves. One of them was Karina Herrera. The coincidence of sharing the same
last name helped Morena embark on a journey to identify these women and take the
fight for their freedom to national and international courts.

Continued: https://english.elpais.com/usa/2021-03-12/from-herrera-to-herrera-women-against-the-patriarchy-in-el-salvador.html

12.03.2021

Commentary

Featured

30-year jail sentence for stillbirth

aggravated homicide charges

Agrupación Ciudadana por la Despenalización del Aborto

Alba Lorena Rodríguez

anti-choice torture

anti-choice zealotry

Center for Reproductive Rights

Cindy Erazo

Citizens’ Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion

Colectiva Feminista para el Desarrollo Local

Feminist Collective for Local Development

gender equality

Giselle Carino

Herrera to Herrera

Inter-American Court of Human Rights

obstetric emergencies

Brazil: New president of the House opens the road for anti-abortion provisions

2 Mar 2021
by Thais Rodrigues and Edson Sardinha*

Brazilian conservative and extreme -right
parlimentarians are planing to take advantage of the new presidency of the
House, MP Arthur Lira (from the Partido Progressista) to push through with
their anti-abortion propositions, which had been shelved by the former
president, MP Rodrigo Maia (Democratas).
Having been supported in his election by the House Evangelical group and the
Parliamentary Front against Abortion and
in Defense of Life, Lira will face much pressure on their part to open the way
for tougher legislation against abortion
to be adopted. This agenda, however, faces
resistance in other quarters of the Congress.

Continued: https://sxpolitics.org/bolsonaros-pick-for-the-house-presidency-promises-anti-abortion-agenda/21900

Brazilian women head to Argentina to avoid abortion ban

David Biller, Almudena Calatrava and Tatiana Pollastri - The Associated Press
Published Thursday, January 7, 2021

RIO DE JANEIRO -- With her 21st birthday fast approaching, Sara left the home she shares with her mother for her first trip on a plane. She didn't tell her family the real reason she'd taken out a loan for 5,000 Brazilian reais (US$1,000).

Two days later and several hundred miles away, a 25-year-old woman packed a backpack in her one-bedroom Sao Paulo apartment and left for the airport with her boyfriend.

Both women were bound for the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, seeking something forbidden in Brazil: an abortion.

Continued: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/brazilian-women-head-to-argentina-to-avoid-abortion-ban-1.5257305

Mike Pompeo is Wrong: There Is an International Right to Abortion

As reluctant as Pompeo and the rest of the Trump administration may be to follow the law, the fact remains: The U.S. is party to a number of human rights treaties that protect abortion rights—and adhering to these treaties is a legal requirement.

11/2/2020
by MERRITE JOHNSON

Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed the Geneva Consensus Declaration, a U.S.-led document that fired yet another shot across the bow at reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy. Bookended by a bizarre montage video, the signing ceremony was touted as a watershed moment in the fight against an international movement to declare a right to abortion at the expense of traditional family values. The only problem? There very much is an international right to abortion.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2020/11/02/mike-pompeo-geneva-consensus-declaration-international-right-to-abortion/

Brazil: Revoke Regulation Curtailing Abortion Access

Reporting Rape Survivors to Police Can Endanger Their Health

September 21, 2020

Human Rights Watch

Brazilian authorities should revoke a Health Ministry regulation that erects
new barriers to legal abortion access, Human Rights Watch said today.

Among other measures in the August 27, 2020 regulation that could discourage
women and girls from accessing legal abortion, it requires medical personnel to
report to the police anyone who seeks legal termination of a pregnancy after
rape, regardless of the rape survivor’s wishes. The Ministry of Family, Women,
and Human Rights has also announced it will create a hotline for medical
personnel that could be used to report women and girls whom they suspect had an
illegal abortion.

Continued: https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/21/brazil-revoke-regulation-curtailing-abortion-access

The case of the girl from Espírito Santo: Is this a new turning point in the long journey for abortion rights in Brazil?

11 Sep 2020
by Sonia Corrêa

Since 1940, Brazilian law has permitted abortion in cases of rape, and sexual intercourse with persons under 14 years old is automatically defined as rape. In 1999, the Brazilian Ministry of Health’s issued the Technical Protocol orienting Care for Victims of Sexual Violence (MoH Protocol), considered by WHO as a main global reference for sexual and reproductive health policies. Though revised in 2005 and 2012, its content has not been substantially altered.

On August
8th, 2020, the Brazilian press reported the case of a 10-year-old girl who
became pregnant after being raped by her uncle, who lived with her, and her
grandmother in the municipality of São Mateus, state of Espírito Santo
(neighboring Rio de Janeiro). After suffering from abdominal pains, the
girl was taken to a local hospital. She told the medical team that she had been
abused since she was 6 years old.

Continued: https://sxpolitics.org/the-case-of-the-girl-from-espirito-santo-is-this-a-new-turning-point-in-the-long-journey-for-abortion-rights-in-brazil/21576

11.09.2020

Commentary

Damares Alves

minor rape victim

rape victims and abortion

Sara Winter

sexual violence

Technical Protocol orienting Care for Victims of Sexual Violence

Abortion for 10-year-old rape victim sparks near-riot in Brazil

A near-riot in front of a hospital in the northeastern town of Recife in mid-August sent shock waves across Brazil. Inside, a 10-year-old rape victim was having an abortion.

Aug 31 , 2020, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Conservative religious groups and right-wing politicians connected to the more radical evangelical churches gathered in front of the hospital and attempted to break in to stop the abortion.

The case of Menina (Portuguese for "girl") as she became known because her identity cannot be disclosed, came to light after the Minister for Women, Family and Human Rights, Damares Alves, herself a pastor of a Pentecostal church, sent representatives to meet with the girl's family trying to convince her to keep the baby.

Continued: https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/abortion-10-year-old-rape-victim-sparks-near-riot-in-brazil