Protesters seek legalization of abortion in Brazil

It may be hard to imagine a 9-year-old, all of 79 pounds and four feet tall, 15 weeks pregnant with twins. Now compound that image with the girl’s story– sexually abused repeatedly, allegedly by her stepfather, since the age of 6. While the alleged rape should be enough to raise media attention, it is the tense controversy over reproductive rights in the predominantly Catholic country that is making headlines after the medical team who performed the legal abortion, as well as the girl’s mother, were summarily excommunicated by the Church.

Brazilian Minister of Health Jose Gomes Temporao declared, “It is legitimate for the church to have its dogmas, but theses dogmas must not be imposed on society as a whole.” Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife countered in a TIME interview, “They took the life of an innocent… Taking that life cannot be ignored.”

The case highlights both the great intersection between religion and health in Brazil and also the critical feature of abortion-access and abuse in the country. Unwanted pregnancy and clandestine abortions are, sadly, a constant in the nation, in which abortion is only permissible in the case of rape or endangerment to the life of the mother. In fact, a new report by Brazil’s IPAS, a non-governmental organization, indicates that each year more than 1 million women undergo illegal abortions in Brazil. Moreover, the head of the Latin America’s most prominent women’s health clinic, Pérola Byington Hospital in São Paolo, Dr. Jefferson Drezett, estimates that 1 in 3 pregnancies in the country is unwanted. In the Pérola Byington Hospital, which specializes in treating victims of sexual violence, 13 out of 47 abortions performed in the past year involved girls under the age of 18.

In a country where, according to IPAS, 250,000 women a year are treated by doctors for traumas due to botched abortions, it is alarming that the reproductive health of women is subject to religious scrutiny and criminalization. Until Brazil can separate religious doctrine from medical treatment, victimized women like the abused 9-year-old may still have to endure a situation in which dogma is placed above their reproductive rights.

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New York Times: Abuse in Brazil