Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – In 2019, Mariana Real de Sousa, a 39-year-old black woman living on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city, was faced with even more difficult news as she struggled to cope with the suicide of her teenage son. . It was said that she was pregnant. .
“I couldn’t believe it,” the social worker told Al Jazeera in a recent video call. She was “not mentally or financially ready for another pregnancy after losing her son.”
She decided to have an abortion, but there was a problem. Brazil's criminal code allows abortion only if the pregnancy is the result of rape, the mother's health is at risk, or if a doctor diagnoses the fetus as having a severe malformation. None of this applied to Real de Sousa.
So she enlisted the help of three close friends. One of them had connections to Cytotec's underground suppliers. Cytotec was originally an ulcer drug, but it was repurposed as a way for low-income women in Latin America to terminate unwanted pregnancies. They pooled their funds and came up with $150 for her to buy the medication.
But the experience was painful. Real de Sousa recalls: “It felt like my body was expelling everything. I experienced chills, severe abdominal pain, and bleeding.” She thought these were standard complications and tried to endure them, but then The following weeks brought her no rest.
“The bleeding wouldn't stop, but I couldn't go to the hospital for fear of legal repercussions,” she said.
Two months later, as her abdomen swelled, Real de Sousa began to fear for her life. She decided to seek help at a nearby public hospital and endured long waits and intensive inquiries until medical staff finally saw her.
Doctors made a surprising discovery. The fetus remained in Real de Souza's womb. She was pregnant with twins, but only one fetus was expelled.
The hospital concluded that this was the result of a miscarriage, and Ms de Sousa was spared criminal charges.
“I felt a sense of relief, but what if I were…white or… [a] A woman of means could have accessed safe clinical care without putting her life at risk,” she said.
“All women get abortions…but only the poor go to prison.”
Brazil, Latin America's most populous country, performs 4 million abortions a year. Of these, only 2,000, or 5%, are done legally.
Women who undergo illegal abortions can face up to three years in prison if convicted, and doctors who perform abortions can face up to four years in prison. Part of Real de Souza's challenge, she said, was that she was familiar with a case involving a poor woman who faced her imprisonment for aborting her pregnancy.
Her story highlights the stark reality of Brazil, a country with more people of African descent than any other country in the world except Nigeria. This means that black people and marginalized women bear the brunt of laws that criminalize abortion.
A study conducted by anthropologist Deborah Dinis found that black women are 46 percent more likely to resort to unsafe abortions than white women.
Luciana Boitou, a member of Congress representing Rio de Janeiro, spearheaded a legal effort in 2017 to propose that the Supreme Court recognize abortion as a constitutional right.
“Decriminalizing abortion is essentially a racial justice issue,” she told Al Jazeera.
Brazil's abortion laws have remained largely unchanged since the 1950s. The change was inspired, at least in part, by the legalization of abortion in neighboring Argentina in 2020 and the inauguration of President Jair Bolsonaro in what was widely seen as a conservative government a year earlier. , with the rise of an active feminist movement in recent years. Hostile towards black people and women.
Bolsonaro's policies have had repercussions in the form of campaigns such as Nem presa nem morta (Nem Presa Nem Morta) (Nem Presa Nem Morta) (Nem Presa Nem Morta) and the women-led anti-Bolsonaro group Ele Nao (NOT HIM), which fight for the decriminalization of abortion. caused it. Rallies have also been held, including the March 8 demonstration where thousands of protesters took to the streets of Rio de Janeiro to demand racial justice and safe and legal access to abortion.
At the march, one woman held a placard that read, “All women get abortions, but while the rich travel for abortions, we poor go to jail.”
Brazil's women's movement is growing but faces pushback from evangelical movements seeking to improve women's reproductive health.
Evangelical influence on discourse on abortion in Brazil
When we think of Brazil, where the statue of Christ the Redeemer towers high above Rio de Janeiro, we generally associate it with the Catholicism of Portugal, its former colony. But the influence of evangelical Christianity here began to grow 30 years before he, and now one in three Brazilians identifies as evangelical. By 2032, evangelicals will make up the majority of religious believers in this country, according to some estimates.
The proliferation of evangelicals in Brazil is helping to deter low-income women like Real de Sousa from seeking abortions.
“We have seen cases where evangelical nurses exposed women and then reported them to the authorities,” Boitou, a member of Congress, told Al Jazeera in an interview in his office in central Rio.
Jacqueline Moraes Teixeira, a sociologist and researcher at the University of Brasilia, said social and economic deficits are responsible for the growth of evangelicalism in Brazil, one of the most unequal countries in the world.
“These churches fill the gaps left by the state, providing education, health care, food, and serving as essential.” [lifelines] For these communities,” she told Al Jazeera.
But for Real de Sousa, the evangelicals have cut off communication, the bulwark of democracy.
“We used to have open dialogue with our families and neighbors who are now evangelicals. Today, opposing views are met with condemnation. This silence has caused me to become pregnant. “I couldn't share my decision to abort my baby,” she said.
Evangelicals are also making efforts at the political level. For example, of the 594 members of the National Assembly, 228 members from 15 political parties belong to the Evangelical Parliamentary Front, including 202 members of the House of Representatives and 26 members of the Senate.
“Evangelicals in Congress have great influence and are seen as a bulwark of ethics, essential for religious activity in politics,” Moraes Teixeira said. “Therefore, their alliances and conservative stances carry great social weight.”
However, the final arbiter on lifting abortion restrictions is the Supreme Court.
In September, Chief Justice Rosa Webber voted in favor of a bill that would decriminalize abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. However, the process was halted by Luis Roberto Barroso, who replaced Mr. Weber on the Supreme Court when he retired.
An investigation by Brazilian news outlet Agencia Publica found that conservative politicians had been promoting anti-abortion campaigns on popular social media platforms in the weeks leading up to the court's deliberations.
Barroso said he supports decriminalization but wants more deliberation. In an interview with Al Jazeera last month, he said: “It's difficult for a court to act against the feelings of 80 percent of the public. We have to change the public's perception.”
“It's important to engage society in dialogue and highlight the real issue of how unjust criminalization disproportionately impacts marginalized women,” she continued. “I believe that by increasing awareness, attitudes can also evolve.”
