New Rio de Janeiro law requires public hospitals to display anti-abortion signs

Opponents view the controversial act as part of a growing trend across Brazil to further restrict abortion access

Tiago Rogero in Rio de Janeiro
Thu 19 Jun 2025

A new law has just come into force in Rio de Janeiro requiring all public hospitals and clinics run by the municipal government to display anti-abortion signs bearing messages such as: “Did you know that the unborn child is discarded as hospital waste?”

Reproductive rights activists view the act as the latest example of a growing trend across Brazil to further restrict access to abortion in a country that already has some of the world’s most restrictive laws.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/19/rio-de-janeiro-anti-abortion-signs

19.06.2025

News

anti-abortion signs

anti-choice lies

anti-choice misinformation

anti-choice propaganda

Debora Diniz

Eduardo Paes

Jair Bolsonaro

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

Under Brazil’s Abortion Ban, ‘Lack of Information Kills’

Abortion stigma stemming from Brazilian law creates misinformation and delays in legal care, and retraumatizes survivors of sexual violence.

MAY 9, 2024
GARNET HENDERSON

On Easter Day in 2023, a woman named Tatiana went to buy Easter eggs for her two daughters. It was something her husband used to do, but he had recently died. So she went herself, after a late shift at a hospital on the outskirts of São Paulo, where she works as a cleaner.

As she left the grocery store near her home, a man armed with a gun drove up and grabbed Tatiana. He threw her into his car and raped her, strangling her and leaving bruises all over her body.

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2024/05/09/under-brazils-abortion-ban-lack-of-information-kills/

In Brazil, an abortion debate pits feminists against the church

Critics say the country’s abortion ban jeopardizes the health of Black and poor women.

By Gabriela Barzallo
12 Apr 2024

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – In 2019, Mariana Leal de Souza, a 39-year-old Black woman living outside Brazil’s largest city, Sao Paulo, was having a hard time coping with the suicide of her teenage son when she was confronted with more difficult news: She was pregnant.

“I couldn’t believe it,” the social worker told Al Jazeera during a recent video call. “Mentally and financially, I wasn’t ready for another pregnancy after the loss of my son.”

She decided to terminate, but there was a problem: Brazil’s Penal Code permits abortion only if the pregnancy is the result of rape, puts the mother’s health at risk or doctors diagnose severe malformations to the fetus. None of these applied to Leal de Souza.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/12/in-brazil-an-abortion-debate-pits-feminists-against-the-church

By bus, car and plane, women journey across Latin America for abortions

By Marina Dias and Terrence McCoy
February 23, 2024

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — She’d taken an overnight bus from the countryside, then a train across the urban sprawl of São Paulo, and now she was staring out the plane window, head full of worry. There was a pink rosary in her pocket. But she didn’t see the point of praying. She feared she was a sinner, a criminal, and this trip, her first time out of Brazil, would be a secret she’d carry for the rest of her life.

Cristina was 35 years old. She was 11 weeks pregnant. She came from a conservative Christian family in a conservative Christian nation where abortion was largely illegal, so she’d decided to travel to a country where it was not and bring an end to the pregnancy she didn’t want.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/23/brazil-latin-america-abortion-restrictions/

Brazil’s top court opens vote on decriminalizing abortion up to 12th week of pregnancy

Mauricio Savarese, The Associated Press
Published Sep 22, 2023

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s top court opened a session Friday that will decide whether abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy will be decriminalized nationwide.

The South American nation currently allows abortions only in cases of rape, an evident risk to the mother’s health or if the fetus has no functioning brain.

Continued: https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/brazils-top-court-opens-vote-on-decriminalizing-abortion-up-to-12th-week-of-pregnancy

22.09.2023

News

abortion law reform

Brazil Supreme Court

Chief Justice Rosa Weber

Debora Diniz

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

Brazil – A 10-year-old rape victim sought an abortion. A judge urged: Stay pregnant.

By Marina Lopes
July 2, 2022

The 10-year-old rape victim was pregnant, and asking a court to authorize an abortion.

She found herself sitting under a crucifix in the courtroom in southern Brazil, across from a judge and prosecutor who repeatedly urged her to continue the pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/02/brazil-child-rape-abortion/

02.07.2022

Featured

News

Brazil 10-year old rape victim

Debora Diniz

Jair Bolsonaro

Joana Ribeiro Zimmer

Juliana Cesario Alvim

Latin American feminists vow to protect abortion rights at home after shock US ruling

Women’s movements have fought hard to reverse anti-abortion laws in their countries and say it’s not the end for the US

Natalie Alcoba in Buenos Aires
Thu 5 May 2022

Reproductive rights activists across Latin America have vowed to protect hard-fought gains in their own territories as they brace for potential ripple effects if the US supreme court overturns Roe vs Wade – the 1973 ruling which guarantees the right to abortion.

Latin America has some of the most draconian anti-abortion laws in the world. But feminist movements have fought for decades to chip away at the prohibitions, and in recent years a younger, diverse generation of activists has mobilized in massive numbers to help clinch a string of victories in traditionally conservative countries.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/may/05/latin-america-abortion-rights-roe-v-wade

06.05.2022

Amnesty International Argentina

Ana Cristina González Vélez

Anis

Anis – Institute of Bioethics

LIVE on April 7: The other health crisis—breaking the taboo on abortion

The webinar will be live-streamed on YouTube, Facebook and Twitch

Written by Melissa Vida
Posted 31 March 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic is not the only health hazard affecting people—there's one that's way more persistent. This World Health Day, let's break the taboo topics of unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions.

It is no small feat—in places where it is illegal to terminate a pregnancy, unsafe abortions cause about 30,000 deaths each year, and numerous health complications.

Continued: https://globalvoices.org/2021/03/31/live-on-april-7-the-other-health-crisis-breaking-the-taboo-on-abortion/

31.03.2021

Film, Art, Books

abortion in a pandemic

Covid-19 and abortion

Debora Diniz

Dominika Lasota

Emilie Palamy Pradichit

World Health Organization

Global

Health

Human 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

Argentina: Can one country’s change of abortion law alter a continent?

By Katy Watson, BBC South America correspondent
March 4, 2021

When Argentina's Congress voted to legalise abortion up to the 14th week of pregnancy, Renata (not her real name) felt excited.

"How cool," the 20-year-old from
northern Brazil remembers thinking in late December. A student and supermarket
worker, Renata saw it as the start of something new in a region where abortion
is mostly illegal.

But she thought little more of it until a
week later, when she found out she was pregnant herself. Then, she says, her
world collapsed.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56098334