Thousands of women took to the streets of Brazil on Saturday, protesting against a newly introduced bill in the Brazilian Parliament. This new bill established that abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy, even in cases of pregnancy due to rape, would amount to homicide and serve 6 to 20 years in prison.
Streets of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Brasília are filled with protesting women, holding posters – “a child is not a mother, a rapist is not a father”- and hands painted in red alluding to the blood stain from a rape victim. “We will not accept a setback,” councilwoman Monica Benicio told Reuters news agency.
“We will not accept a conservative government negotiating spurious policies over our lives. We will continue to advance until legal abortion is a guaranteed right in Brazil,” she added.
A child is not a mother: Protesting women
Dozens of demonstrators took to the streets of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to protest against a controversial bill in Brazil that criminalizes abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy pic.twitter.com/4T4tci2ave
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 14, 2024
These protesters’ major concern was that children under 18 would suffer in silence due to such a stringent abortion law. Rape victims under 18 realise their pregnancy in the later stage. “For children, it is common for a pregnancy to be discovered only after 22 weeks,” Ivanilda Figueiredo, a professor of law at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, said by phone. For example, they might not know that periods — a sign women aren’t pregnant — are monthly, she said.
Of the 74,930 people who were victims of rape in Brazil in 2022, 61.4% were under 14 years old, according to a 2023 study of the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety, an independent group that tracks crimes.
This new bill, if turned into law, would also magnify the inequalities in health care, putting children, black women, poor women and those living in rural areas at greater risk.
An attempt to impress the Evangelists
The conservatives are emphasizing to push the bill forward with a hope to impress the Evangelical voters in October municipal elections. They are hopeful to boost voter turnout during the October elections, said an AP report.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government has been seeking inroads with Evangelicals, a key voting bloc for far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro. Lula beat Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential election.
But speaking at the G7 meet in Italy, Lula said, “ I had five kids, eight grandchildren and a great-grandchild. I’m against abortion. However, since abortion is a reality, we need to treat abortion as a public health issue,” he said in a news conference. “And I think it’s insanity that someone wants to punish a woman with a sentence that’s longer than the criminal who committed the rape.”
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Brazil’s abortion law
Brazil has one of the most restrictive abortion laws for women. The National Health System estimates that nearly 250 million women rush to emergency wards every year with problems stemming from unsafe illegal abortions. Unsafe abortion is the fourth leading cause of maternal mortality in the country, after hypertension, hemorrhaging (which could also include abortion-related hemorrhaging), and post-birth infections.
According to the Brazillian law, abortion is only permitted to save the pregnant woman’s life or where the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.
Historically speaking, abortion has constituted a crime in Brazil since the late nineteenth century. The penal code from 1890 criminalized abortion in all circumstances. In 1940, the penal code provisions on abortion were amended to waive punishment on two grounds: where the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest preceded by the consent of the pregnant woman; and where the pregnant woman’s life is in danger. These two situations come under necessary abortions.
