‘You feel like a criminal’: How trans people are pushed further to the margins in anti-abortion Brazil

Dec 8, 2024

São Paulo, Brazil — In the summer of 2023, Matheus terminated his pregnancy at a friend’s house. 26-year-old Matheus, who identifies as nonbinary and uses he/she pronouns, said he, made the decision because he felt unsafe with the person he had sex with, and the pregnancy triggered his gender dysphoria.

“I thought about how my body would be with the pregnancy, and it shakes me,” he told CNN, sitting at a park in the Brazilian city of São José dos Campos. “My breasts would have milk, and my breasts are a part of my body, that really bothers me”. Despite the toll the pregnancy would have taken on Matheus’ mental health – whose real name has been changed to protect his identity – what he did is illegal.

Continued: https://www.bundle.app/en/breakingNews/'you-feel-like-a-criminal':-how-trans-people-are-pushed-further-to-the-margins-in-anti-abortion-braz-da92d3b1-953c-4e45-bc98-a3ebee9f794f

Brazilian abortion activist had to go abroad to end pregnancy

By Lais Morais
December 5, 2024

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - When Rebeca Mendes became pregnant, she fought for the right to have an abortion in Brazil. The Supreme Court denied her request to allow it in 2017, so she flew to Colombia to terminate her pregnancy.

Now she is an activist for the right to have safe and legal abortions in a country where they are only allowed in the case of rape, fetal deformation or the mother's life is in danger.

Continued: https://www.yahoo.com/news/brazilian-abortion-activist-had-abroad-130349895.html

05.12.2024

News

Cachoeirinha Municipal Maternity Hospital

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/

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/

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

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

Brazil’s Restrictive Abortion Laws Are Being Reconsidered By Its Supreme Court

Brazil's Restrictive Abortion Laws Are Being Reconsidered By Its Supreme Court

By Morgan Brinlee
Aug 4, 2018

Under Brazil's current law, obtaining an abortion except in cases of rape, diagnosis of a brain-related birth defect, or in instances where it's necessary to save the woman's life is not only prohibited but also punishable with prison time. But could the law soon change? Brazil's Supreme Court began hearing arguments to decriminalize abortion Friday as part of a rare public hearing.

Brazil's top court has been asked to consider whether or not Brazil's restrictive abortion laws — which date back to the 1940s and punish women who obtain an abortion in any situation outside of the legally allowed exceptions with up to three years in prison — violate protections guaranteed in the country's 1988 constitution. As part of its hearing, the court will also consider a proposal to decriminalize abortion until the 12th week of gestation.

Continued: https://www.bustle.com/p/brazils-restrictive-abortion-laws-are-being-reconsidered-by-its-supreme-court-9998682

Brazil’s Supreme Court Considers Decriminalizing Abortion

Brazil’s Supreme Court Considers Decriminalizing Abortion

By Manuela Andreoni and Ernesto Londoño
Aug. 3, 2018

Leer en español

PETRÓPOLIS, Brazil — For three days after she had an illegal abortion, Ingriane Barbosa Carvalho hemorrhaged in silence. Even as she writhed in pain, and an infection caused by the botched procedure spread, Ms. Carvalho insisted to relatives she was just nursing a stomach bug.

By the time she sought medical help, it was too late. Ms. Carvalho, a 31-year-old mother of three, died seven days later.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/world/americas/brazil-abortion-supreme-court.html

Brazilian women braced for battle amid simmering fears over abortion

Brazilian women braced for battle amid simmering fears over abortion
The abortion debate is nearing a crossroads in a country where stringent laws put women seeking terminations at deadly risk

Jo Griffin in Rio de Janeiro
Thu 26 Apr 2018

For her first abortion, Anna went to a clandestine clinic in the south zone of Rio de Janeiro where a doctor bungled the procedure and left her needing further treatment. Years later, no trace remains of the now-defunct clinic, yet memories of the experience still stir anxiety.

“Even if the service was good, you knew you could go to prison if you were found out,” says Anna, who wanted to be known only by her first name. “And if something went wrong, who could you ask for help? There was no one.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/apr/26/brazil-women-braced-for-battle-simmering-fears-abortion-law

I tried (and failed) to get a safe and legal abortion in Brazil

I tried (and failed) to get a safe and legal abortion in Brazil

By Rebeca Mendes
Feb 09, 2018

I'm a 30-year-old Brazilian with two young children, temporary employment and hopes for an eventual legal career. When I sought permission to terminate my pregnancy, I was thinking about my family, my finances and my future. In the process I found myself at the center of a political story, becoming the first woman in our country to fight for an abortion in court based on personal, nonmedical needs.

Last month, the United States marked the 45th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade — a landmark decision that secured the right of American women to have an abortion. It remains the law of the land, despite repeated attempts to reverse the decision. Since filing my petition with Brazil's Supreme Court last year, many people have compared my suit to Jane Roe's. But there is one crucial difference: She won. The court denied my plea and women in Brazil continue to risk their health and lives if they decide to terminate a pregnancy.

Continued: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-mendes-brazil-abortion-20180209-story.html