The Chamber of Deputies of Brazil approved on Wednesday night to urgently process a controversial bill that equates legal abortion with homicide if the interruption is carried out after the 22nd week of gestation. There are three reasons now protected by law: rape, risk to the life of the pregnant woman and anencephaly (the fetus lacks a brain). The proposal is part of an ultra-conservative offensive in Congress, where the president, the leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his allies are in the minority, and has the support of the three most powerful parliamentary groups: those of the Bible, the Bullet and the Ox, that is, the evangelical, the agricultural sector and the defenders of weapons.
The bill, which could be voted on in plenary session as early as next week, provides for sentences of between 6 and 20 years in prison for women who undergo a legal abortion after week 22. The current penalty for a Illegal pregnancy termination ranges from 1 to 3 years. Activists in defense of women’s right to decide warn that, if the tightening is approved, it would mean that a raped woman could be punished with twice as much prison as her attacker because in Brazil the penalty for rape is 10 years. It would also exceed the penalties for unintentional homicide, robbery, robbery, drug and weapons trafficking.
As night fell, hundreds of women – and many men – gathered on Paulista Avenue, the main avenue in São Paulo, to protest. Among the most chanted slogans, “the girl is not a mother, the rapist is not a father.” For retiree Maria, 80, the proposal “punishes girls and women, and supports rapists,” she says, before pointing out a crucial factor: “We elected a progressive government, but we are in an absolute minority in Congress.” ”. The midwife student Mariana Borges, 27, has come with several companions. “We fight for social and reproductive justice,” she explains. She considers that the project in question amounts to “denying the right to health and a full life.”
Legal abortions (about 2,000 annually) are a tiny part of those performed, estimated at around one million. More than 150,000 Brazilian women were hospitalized in 2021 due to spontaneous abortions or complications resulting from clandestine terminations.
The Minister of Women, Cida Gonçalves, has criticized the project in an official note. She says she “revictimizes girls and women who are victims of rape and imposes even more barriers to access to legal abortion.” She also recalled a shocking fact: 38 girls under the age of 14 become mothers every day in Brazil, that is, in the eyes of the law they would have the right to abort as victims of rape.
Brazil was a pioneer in Latin America in legislating abortion in 1940, but its neighbors have long since taken the lead. In recent years, women’s reproductive rights have made important advances in the most important countries in the region, such as Argentina, Mexico, Colombia or Chile. The first three have decriminalized the voluntary interruption of pregnancy, either through parliamentary or judicial means.
The Chilean president, Gabriel Boric, has just announced a proposal to legalize abortion in his country, just seven years after he lifted the absolute veto to allow three grounds. Contrary to the region in this matter, in Brazil the battle is not to expand the right but to guarantee that the law is complied with. In that it is more aligned with the United States.
Brazilian evangelical parliamentarians are simultaneously promoting a proposal to toughen the drug law. They are trying in this case and in that of abortion to reverse decisions adopted by the Supreme Court, less conservative than Parliament. It is an institutional battle around two of the main banners of the ultra-conservatives, who are committed to legal tightening in both issues driven by the growing power and membership of the evangelical Churches.
For President Lula and the Workers’ Party, this is a politically toxic issue. Although in the last electoral campaign he defended that abortion should be treated as a public health issue, now that Lula is president he prefers to avoid the issue.
The process of approving the urgency of the abortion bill was most atypical, despite the depth of what is at stake. His honorable Members aired the matter in 23 seconds by assent, without debate or vote despite the protests of the parliamentarians of the far-left Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL). One of her deputies, Erika Hilton, managed to mobilize the main fan clubs of artists like Anitta or Madonna on social networks to raise her voice against the equation of legal abortion with homicide.
The Brazilian Congress is the most masculine in the region. Women only occupy 17% of the seats, a situation that places it light years away, for example, from the second most populous Latin American country, Mexico. The northern neighbors have just elected their next president between two women and, thanks to the quotas implemented and respected years ago, parliamentarians are around 50%.
The parliamentary push to toughen abortion and drug laws coincides with a moment of weakness for President Lula. The Government and its allies are suffering to carry out their legislative agenda. This Wednesday it was learned that the Minister of Communications is being investigated for corruption and the Executive has had to cancel due to irregularities the auction to import rice and replace the supply lost in the devastating floods of Rio Grande do Sul.
Ana Luzia, a 45-year-old secretary, goes to the protest in São Paulo outraged. “My concern is that it will be voted on and approved or that it will be saved to be voted on at a time when the lights are not on or we are not mobilized.” All those interviewed hope that, if Congress approves the initiative, President Lula will veto it.
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