Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – In 2019, Mariana Leal de Souza, a 39-year-old black woman living outside Brazil’s largest city, Sao Paulo, was struggling to cope with the suicide of her teenage son when she was confronted with a more difficult news: she was pregnant. .
“I couldn’t believe it,” the social worker told Al Jazeera during a recent video call. “Mentally and financially, I was not ready for another pregnancy after losing my son.”
She decided to stop, but there was a problem: The Brazilian Penal Code only allows abortion if the pregnancy is the result of rape, endangers the health of the mother or if doctors diagnose serious malformations in the fetus. None of these applied to Leal de Souza.
So she called on three close friends, one of whom had ties to a clandestine supplier of Cytotec, a drug originally intended for ulcers but reused by low-income women in Latin America as a means of terminating unwanted pregnancies. By pooling their resources, they managed to raise $150 to buy the drug.
But the experience was distressing. As Leal de Souza recalls: “I felt like my body was expelling everything. I felt chills, severe abdominal pain and bleeding. She assumed these were typical complications and tried to endure them, but the weeks that followed brought her no respite.
“The bleeding wouldn’t stop, but I couldn’t get treatment at the hospital for fear of legal consequences,” she said.
Two months later, with a swollen stomach, Leal de Souza began to fear for his life. She decided to seek help at a nearby public hospital where she endured prolonged wait times and an avalanche of inquiries before medical staff finally examined her.
Doctors made a surprising discovery: a fetus remained in Leal de Souza’s womb. She was carrying twins and only one fetus had been expelled.
The hospital concluded that it was the result of a miscarriage, sparing de Souza from criminal prosecution.
“I felt a sense of relief, but a simmering resentment remained, knowing that if I were… white or (an) affluent woman, I could have accessed safe clinical care without putting my life in danger,” said she declared.
“All women have abortions but… only the poor go to prison”
As much as 4 million abortions are performed every year in Brazil, the most populous country in Latin America. Among these, only 2,000, or 5 percentare carried out legally.
Women who have illegal abortions face prison sentences of up to three years in the event of conviction, and doctors who practice them can spend up to four years in prison. Part of Leal de Souza’s ordeal, she said, was that she was well aware of cases involving poor women who had faced incarceration for terminating their pregnancy.
Her story highlights a glaring reality in Brazil, a country that is home to more people of African descent than any other country in the world except Nigeria: Black and marginalized women bear the brunt of legislation that criminalizes ‘abortion.
A study conducted by anthropologist Debora Diniz found that black women are 46 percent more likely than white women to resort to unsafe abortion practices.
A federal legislator representing Rio de Janeiro, Luciana Boiteux, initiated a legal initiative to the Supreme Court in 2017, proposing to enshrine abortion as a constitutional right.
“Decriminalizing abortion is inherently a racial justice issue,” she told Al Jazeera.
Brazil’s abortion laws have remained virtually unchanged since the 1950s. What has changed is the emergence in recent years of a vibrant feminist movement, inspired, at least in part, by the legalization of abortion. abortion in neighboring countries. Argentina in 2020 and the inauguration a year earlier of President Jair Bolsonaro, whose conservative administration was widely seen as hostile toward black people and women.
Bolsonaro’s policies have sparked a backlash in the form of campaigns such as Nem Presa Nem Morta (Neither Imprisoned Nor Death), which fights for the decriminalization of abortion, and the anti-Bolsonaro movement led by women. Ele Nao (Not him). Rallies have also taken place, such as the one on March 8 in which thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Rio de Janeiro to demand racial justice and legal and safe access to abortion.
At the march, a woman carried a sign that read: “All women can have an abortion, but while the rich travel to get one, we poor people go to jail.” »
The women’s movement in Brazil is growing, but it faces opposition from the evangelical movement in its efforts to improve women’s reproductive health.
The influence of evangelicals on the discourse on abortion in Brazil
With the statue of Christ the Redeemer dominating Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is generally associated with the Catholicism of its former colonizer, Portugal. But the influence of evangelical Christianity began to spread here 30 years ago, and today, one in three Brazilians identifies as evangelical. By some estimates, evangelicals will make up the majority of the country’s religious faithful. by 2032.
The proliferation of evangelicals in Brazil has helped discourage low-income women like Leal de Souza from seeking abortion.
“We have witnessed cases where evangelical nurses exposed women and then reported to authorities,” Boiteux, the federal lawmaker, told Al Jazeera in an interview in her office in downtown Rio.
Jacqueline Moraes Teixeira, sociologist and researcher at the University of Brasilia, attributed evangelical growth to the social and economic deficits of Brazil, one of the most unequal countries in the world.
“These churches fill the gaps left by the state, providing education, healthcare and livelihood, acting as much-needed lifelines for these communities,” she told Al Jazeera.
For Leal de Souza, however, evangelicals have cut off the communication that is the bulwark of democracy.
“We used to have open dialogues with my family and neighbors who are now evangelical. Today, dissent is condemned. This silence prevented me from sharing my decision to terminate my pregnancy,” she said.
Evangelicals have also flexed their muscles politically. Of the 594 members of the National CongressFor example, the Evangelical Parliamentary Front has 228 deputies from 15 parties – 202 deputies and 26 senators.
“Evangelicals in Congress hold significant influence and are considered a critical ethical bastion for religious activism in politics,” Moraes Teixeira said. “Therefore, their alliances and conservative position carry significant societal weight. »
However, the final arbiter of lifting abortion restrictions is the Supreme Court.
At a session in September, Chief Justice Rosa Weber voted in favor of a measure to decriminalize abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy. But the process was stopped by another Supreme Court justice, Luis Roberto Barroso, who has since replaced the retired Weber as chief justice.
Investigation According to Brazilian media outlet Agencia Publica, in the weeks leading up to the court’s deliberations, conservative politicians broadcast anti-abortion campaigns on popular social media platforms.
For his part, Barroso said he was in favor of decriminalization but wanted more deliberations. In an interview with Al Jazeera last month, he said: “It is difficult for the court to act against the sentiment of 80% of the population. We need to change public perception.
“It is crucial to engage in dialogue with society and clarify the real problem: the unjust criminalization that disproportionately affects marginalized women,” he continued. “With greater awareness, I believe attitudes can change.”