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

Brazil abortion debate: Gov’t imposes new rules for rape victims

Why a 10-year-old child has reignited the debate on abortion in Brazil.
(3 minute video)

by Monica Yanakiew
1 Sep 2020

Brazil has imposed new rules for rape victims seeking an abortion, requiring them to look at the fetus before the procedure.

Doctors are also obligated to report their cases to the police.

This comes two weeks after anti-abortion rights activists surrounded a hospital to stop a 10-year-old girl from terminating her pregnancy.

Al Jazeera's Monica Yanakiew reports from Rio de Janeiro.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/09/brazil-abortion-debate-govt-imposes-rules-rape-victims-200901160743666.html

01.09.2020

anti-choice restrictions

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

Brazil expands requirements for abortion in rape cases

AFP, Rio de Janeiro
AUG 29 2020

Brazil expanded its requirements Friday for rape victims seeking an abortion, including a rule that medical staff must tell the woman she can see the embryo or fetus via ultrasound.

The new regulations published by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro's health ministry also stipulate that the rape "must be reported to police" regardless of the woman's wishes, that she must give doctors "a detailed account" of what happened, and that she must be "expressly warned" she can be prosecuted for fraud and aborting illegally if she is unable to prove her claim.

Continued: https://www.deccanherald.com/international/brazil-expands-requirements-for-abortion-in-rape-cases-879458.html

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

Latin America – Covid-19 hospital beds and abortion

There is hard evidence that the pandemic presents a heightened risk to reproductive health

DEBORA DINIZ and GISELLE CARINO
31 JUL 2020

“Abortion is a public health matter,” scientists say. This notion seems a bit abstract – how can a criminalized practice constitute a public health need? The Covid-19 pandemic is a teachable moment. But it is the teaching of horror: according to the World Health Organization, thousands of women visit health services every month to receive care for incomplete abortions. In Argentina, the figure was 3,330 women; in Chile, 1,522; in Colombia, 7,778; and in Mexico, 18,285, in different years. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 760,000 women in Latin America and the Caribbean are treated annually at healthcare services because of complications from unsafe abortions, averaging out to 63,000 beds a month. When a woman goes to a hospital for complications from an unsafe abortion, she might end up needing a bed twice: once, to treat the unsafe abortion and next, to be treated for the Covid-19 she contracted in the hospital.

Continued: https://english.elpais.com/opinion/2020-07-31/covid-19-hospital-beds-and-abortion.html

BRAZIL – Online newspaper AzMina, run by women journalists, attacked and threatened online

BRAZIL – Online newspaper AzMina, run by women journalists, attacked and threatened online

by International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion
Oct 11, 2019

AzMina is a feminist journalists’ collective that campaigns for gender equality, covers women’s rights and provides extensive and critical reporting on all kinds of violence against women in Brazil. They also provide training and organise debates throughout the country.

On 18 September 2019 AzMina published a report online entitled “How to abort safely”. The report used World Health Organization recommendations to advise women how to have a safe abortion using medical abortion pills.

Continued: https://www.safeabortionwomensright.org/brazil-online-newspaper-azmina-attacked-and-threatened-online/

Brazilian outlet AzMina faces criminal complaints, online harassment over abortion article

Brazilian outlet AzMina faces criminal complaints, online harassment over abortion article

September 25, 2019

Rio de Janeiro, September 25, 2019 -- Brazilian authorities should investigate harassment against AzMina magazine and its journalists, and should refrain from prosecuting the outlet or its journalists for their reporting on abortion, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

On September 18, AzMina, a São Paulo-based online magazine that covers women’s rights, published an article explaining safe methods for obtaining an abortion and the circumstances under which abortion is legal in Brazil, based on reporting and information from the World Health Organization.

Continued: https://cpj.org/2019/09/brazilian-outlet-azmina-faces-criminal-complaints-.php

Health for All, Except Women? Contestations on Women’s Reproductive Rights at WHA72

Health for All, Except Women? Contestations on Women's Reproductive Rights at WHA72
The document approved by the Security Council by a vote of 13-0, with Russia and China abstaining, had all language relating to “sexual and reproductive health” rights removed.

WHO Watch Team
03 Jul 2019

This year, the World Health Assembly was made a stage for the United States to display its regressive agenda on women’s sexual and reproductive health rights. Not so long ago, in April, the country had already exercised its power in the United Nations Security Council on the same topic. Pressure from the Trump administration has removed references to sexual health from a resolution against sexual violence during conflict. The original resolution, proposed by Germany, said that women who had been raped needed access to safe abortions, as well as reproductive and sexual healthcare. But the document approved by the Security Council by a vote of 13-0, with Russia and China abstaining, had all language relating to “sexual and reproductive health” rights removed.

Continued: https://www.newsclick.in/Health-Women-Russia-China-Sexual-Reproductive