Argentina’s lower house passes bill to allow abortion

Argentina will become only fourth Latin American country where abortion is legal

Uki Goñi in Buenos Aires and Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Fri 11 Dec 2020

Argentina is poised to become the first major Latin American country to decriminalise abortion after legislation was given the green light by lower house.

The bill, which was submitted last month by the leftwing president, Alberto Fernández, was approved on Friday morning by a margin of 131 to 117 votes after a 20-hour debate. It will be voted on by the senate at the end of this month.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/11/argentina-lower-house-approves-abortion-bill-legal

Religious zealots only show why abortion should be legal

By Suzanne McLaughlin
22nd August

LAST week a 10-year-old Brazilian girl wearing a little flowery dress and cheap
flip-flops was bundled into a car boot clutching her fluffy toy frog. She was
driven through a back door to a hospital guarded by military police past a
throng of right-wing and religious extremists in order to have a termination.

Abortion is allowed in Brazil in just three instances: to save a woman’s life,
if it is the result of rape and if the child is dead. This little girl was
living through two of these circumstances. She was a victim of rape and her
life was in imminent danger and so the judge in her home area ruled that the
abortion should go ahead.

Continued: https://www.thenational.scot/news/18669689.suzanne-mclaughlin-religious-zealots-show-abortion-legal/

Brazil: outcry as religious extremists harass child seeking abortion

Ten-year-old girl was forced to fly more than 900 miles to north-eastern city of Recife for the procedure after being raped

Tom Phillips and Caio Barretto Briso in Rio de Janeiro
Mon 17 Aug 2020

Scores of Brazilian women have taken to the streets to protect a 10-year-old child who was being persecuted by religious extremists for trying to legally undergo an abortion after being raped, allegedly by her uncle.

The girl, from São Mateus, a small town in the south-eastern state of Espírito Santo, was admitted to hospital on 7 August complaining of abdominal pain and doctors confirmed she was pregnant.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/17/brazil-protest-abortion-recife-hospital

Raped from the age of six and pregnant at 10 amid a culture war over legal abortion in Brazil

by Bhavi Mandalia
August 16, 2020

A pregnancy at 10 years kills. This message,
in the form of hashtag, has taken over Brazilian social networks in recent
days, after the case of a 10-year-old girl who became pregnant after being
raped came to light. The victim, who resides in the city of São Mateus, in the
State of Espírito Santo, went to the hospital on August 8 accompanied by her
aunt, who, according to the report of the Military Police, told the doctors
that she believed she was. pregnant. After a blood test confirmed that she was
three months old, the girl told doctors and a social worker that her uncle had
raped her since she was six years old and that she never said anything for fear
of his death threats. The Police and the Guardianship Council investigated the
case. The girl was transferred to a center for minors while doctors and the
Justice analyzed the interruption of the pregnancy, guaranteed by law in cases
like this.

Continued: https://pledgetimes.com/raped-from-the-age-of-six-and-pregnant-at-10-amid-a-culture-war-over-legal-abortion-in-brazil/

Brazil – Covid-19 and the wounded uterus

There would be no death, bleeding or suffering if abortion were recognized for what it is: a medical necessity

Debora Diniz and Giselle Carino
01 jul 2020

The news report described her as an anonymous 31-year-old woman. The subheading read: “Case happened in Bom Jesus do Norte” – or Good Jesus of the North. From what we know, she was the first woman to die from a clandestine abortion in Brazil during the coronavirus pandemic. The nameless woman “was two months pregnant,” according to her husband. Twice she sought help in spaces of death, at unsafe abortion houses. She tried a hose, potassium permanganate, syringes. She died of cardiac arrest. Why did she persist? We do not know, nor do her innermost reasons matter. It is enough to know that she was a woman determined not to be forced into maternity during the pandemic.

The pandemic killed her. Cause and effect can be debated in this narrative, that is true. Her death was not from Covid-19, but from the policies that rule women’s bodies as if they were material to be controlled by criminal law.

Continued: https://english.elpais.com/opinion/2020-07-01/covid-19-and-the-wounded-uterus.html

When Abortion Is Illegal, Women Rarely Die. But They Still Suffer.

When Abortion Is Illegal, Women Rarely Die. But They Still Suffer.
A look at what happens when abortion is forbidden, from countries where it still is

Olga Khazan
Oct 11, 2018

In August, the Argentine Senate rejected a bill that would have decriminalized abortion in the country within the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. Less than a week later, the newspaper Clairín reported that a 34-year-old woman died from septic shock after attempting to terminate her own pregnancy using parsley.

The woman, referred to only as Elizabeth, became one of the 40-some Argentine women who die each year from unsafe abortions. “Illegality forces the poorest women to use the most desperate practices,” one doctor was quoted as saying.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/10/how-many-women-die-illegal-abortions/572638/

Supreme Court of Brazil: Public Hearing on the Decriminalization of Abortion, August 3rd & 6th 2018– Antecedents, Content, Meanings

FEATURE: BRAZIL
Supreme Court of Brazil: Public Hearing on the Decriminalization of Abortion, August 3rd & 6th 2018– Antecedents, Content, Meanings

9 October 2018
by Sonia Corrêa, Sexuality Policy Watch

On August 3rd and 6th 2018, the Supreme Court of Brazil held a Public Hearing on ADPF 442/2017[1], a juridical instrument that challenges the constitutionality of the articles in the 1940 Penal Code that criminalize abortion. This challenge was presented to the Supreme Court in March 2017. In her opening remarks, the then Chief Justice Carmen Lucia defined the hearing as a space opened by the Court for society to manifest its views on the matter and raise arguments that could contribute to a more just judgment.

Continued: https://mailchi.mp/safeabortionwomensright/feature-supreme-court-of-brazil-public-hearing-on-the-decriminalization-of-abortion-august-2018?e=372dd34034

09.10.2018

Ana Rita Prata and Livia Cásseres

Anand Grover

Anis

Anis – Institute of Bioethics

Brazil Supreme Court

Brazilian Association of Bioethics

decriminalization of abortion

Heloísa Helena Barbosa

Human Rights Watch

Inter-American Convention on Human Rights

International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion

International Safe Abortion Day

José Henrique Torres

Livia Gil Guimarães

Natália Mori

Professor Rebecca Cook

self-induced abortion

Brazil – Presidential Candidates Need to Heed Abortion Debate

Presidential Candidates Need to Heed Abortion Debate

September 24, 2018
Margaret Wurth, Senior Researcher, Children's Rights Division

Activists around the world will mark the Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion on September 28. Like several other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Brazil is in the midst of a vigorous public debate around abortion following a recent Supreme Court hearing on the issue. Brazil’s criminal code still severely restricts access to legal abortion. But the fact that the issue is being discussed openly, including in the presidential campaign, and that women are coming forward to share their stories of ending a pregnancy, is already a significant step forward.

Under the criminal code in Brazil, abortion is illegal except in cases of rape, when necessary to save a woman’s life, or when the fetus suffers from anencephaly – a fatal congenital brain disorder. Activists have fought for years to ease the country’s abortion restrictions, citing evidence that criminal penalties do nothing to reduce abortion, but instead lead women to risk their health and lives to terminate pregnancies clandestinely.

Continued: https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/09/24/presidential-candidates-need-heed-abortion-debate

They Lost Argentina’s Abortion Vote, but Advocates Started a Movement

They Lost Argentina’s Abortion Vote, but Advocates Started a Movement

By Daniel Politi and Ernesto Londoño
Aug. 9, 2018

BUENOS AIRES — They narrowly lost the vote. But as supporters of a bill to legalize abortion in Argentina began to shake off a stinging defeat in the Senate on Thursday, they took consolation in having galvanized a reproductive-rights movement across Latin America and began to consider how to redirect their activism.

A coalition of young female lawmakers who stunned the political establishment by putting abortion rights at the top of the legislative agenda this year seemed to be on the verge of a historic victory with the bill. But intense lobbying by Catholic Church leaders and staunch opposition in conservative northern provinces persuaded enough senators to vote against it.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/09/world/americas/argentina-abortion-laws-south-america.html

09.08.2018

abortion rights activists

Adolfo Rubenstein

Benjamin Gedan

Catholic Church

Center for Legal and Social Studies

Center for the Promotion and Defense of Sexual and Reproductive Rights

Center for the Study of State and Society

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Debora Diniz

decriminalization of abortion

International Women's Health Coalition

President Mauricio Macri

pro-choice campaigners

Susana Chávez

violence against women

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Tensions flare in Brazil as supreme court considers loosening abortion restrictions

Tensions flare in Brazil as supreme court considers loosening abortion restrictions

by Marina Lopes
August 6 2018

SAO PAULO — Brazil’s supreme court is considering decriminalizing abortion through the 12th week of pregnancy, stoking activists' hopes that the country could follow other Latin American nations in loosening abortion restrictions.

Hearings on the issue, which began Friday and continued on Monday, included testimony from dozens of doctors, specialists and religious leaders. Tensions flared in the days leading up to the hearings, with activists on both sides speaking out. Outside the supreme court on Friday, women donned red robes resembling those worn on the hit TV show, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” in favor of decriminalization. Meanwhile, #AbortionisaCrime trended on Twitter, and churches sounded their bells in protest.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/08/06/tensions-flare-brazil-supreme-court-considers-loosening-abortion-restrictions/?utm_term=.b55e1952e7f8