Legal Abortion At Risk In Brazil
Updated: Mar 8, 2025
Written by: Mayra Cardozo, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
This week was a tense week in the field of reproductive rights in Brazil. That's because a project of law that aims to establish the rights of embryos is on the agenda for voting in the national congress.
The Statute of the Unborn Child is a bill based on the belief that life begins at conception.
This project and law aim to equate unborn children and embryos with humans, giving them the same legal and moral status as born and living people.
If this project is approved, several women's achievements over the years will be left entirely behind.
Women, girls, and the other people they manage will be forced to accept the pregnancy, even if the fetus is anencephalic.
This situation broadly violates the precept of human dignity since it is inhumane for a woman to carry her child for nine months, knowing that he will not survive.
In addition, this project aims to modify the Brazilian Penal Code to increase the penalty for criminal abortions.
This fact made the situation of reproductive rights in Brazil much more complicated since we all know that abortion is a reality in the country; the difference is that rich women abort in luxury clandestine clinics and poor women abort with broomsticks.
Therefore, this project will lead to more illegal abortions and the tragic consequences of these abortions, such as lack of access to primary health care.
One of the projects attached to this statute determines that in the legal case of abortion when the pregnancy results from sexual violence, the State or the rapist must pay alimony.
This appendix aims to prevent women, victims of sexual violence, from having legal abortions. First, however, we must remember that the rapist is not a father, and a woman should not be forced to have a child with the person who raped her.
This project represents a giant setback in the field of reproductive rights in Brazil and a massive violation of the precept of human dignity.
Mayra Cardozo, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Mayra is one of the pioneers in Brazil in feminist coaching and is something she is passionate about. Despite being a lawyer and partner in a famous office in Brazil and a university professor of Human Rights, these were not enough for her. She always wants to make a difference in people's lives. It was then that she discovered her passion and became a life coach; she has a brilliant curriculum involving the best national and international courses. The objective of your work is to empower human beings to be their best version and help them emancipate themselves from socially constructed beliefs to be their essence. Her approach is different. It aims to unite the coaching process with the development of an inclusive and emancipatory awareness.
