Gender Across Borders

The Non-Religious State in Brazil

In Brazil, abortion is a crime not only for the doctor who performs it but also for women having the surgery. It’s not a crime for men who got these women pregnant and often run away. The Brazilian government is supposed to be non-religious where political decisions are not supposed to be guided by religious values and beliefs. When representatives who discuss abortion issues by debating the notion of “life” according to Christian values and therefore as a gift to be preserved no matter what, they’re in fact being unconstitutional. In Brazil, we do not have a non-religious culture and a State that works to improve citizen’s lives. This is somewhat recent in Brazilian history. Sérgio Buarque de Holanda and Darcy Ribeiro, two important Brazilian sociologists, have described in their works how the old colonialist plantation mind shaped Brazilian political culture. We even had a president who used to openly say: “To my friends, everything. To the enemies, the law.”

A bit of theory

Political theory, according to sociologists, political scientists and philosophers, says that the State is a structure created to maintain a certain ideology. It is a domination structure where a certain social group rules over others. It’s easy to prove that when we look at who’s ruling the State: men who are white and usually from families who have had money for centuries. Both sociologists Louis Althusser and Pierre Bourdieu have described how education, religion and other social institutions work to keep things working in this domination structure. Read the rest of this entry →

A few weeks ago I posted about abortion access in Brazil, and  since then I have read several pieces about abortion access in other countries. Last week the New York Times published an article about abortion providers in the United States. (Lest anyone feels inclined to step up on an America-is-better pedestal, 87% of counties in the US have no abortion providers.) Women then shared more personal experiences of abortion access on AKIMBO.

On Friday, Jessica posted about six women jailed for homicide in Mexico for miscarrying or terminating pregnancies. In Spain, a new law recently went into effect allowing unrestricted abortions in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. The law could technically still be suspended or challenged by the Constitutional Court, but this is not expected to happen. In New Zealand, MP Steve Chadwick has proposed a law to allow legal abortions up to 24 weeks of pregnancy. The anti-choice opposition cry of “no abortions” has shifted to one of just “less abortions”, strongly weakening the sanctity of life argument. Meanwhile a new poll in Australia has shown that many Australians support late-term abortions in certain circumstances. Currently, abortion laws vary by jurisdiction, and a woman in Queensland is facing up to 7 years in jail if convicted of procuring an abortion.

Has anyone else read any relevant stories on abortion access in other countries?

The abortion debate in Brazil received a lot of media attention in March surrounding the case of a nine-year-old girl who terminated a pregnancy that was the result of rape at the hands of her stepfather. In addition to the harrowing details of the case, public flames were further stoked when Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho announced that the young girl, her family and the doctors who performed the abortion would all be excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

The press has since died down a bit, but abortion in Brazil still remains illegal except in cases of rape or when the mother’s life is in danger (both of which applied in the above mentioned case.) Several NGOs continue to fight to protect women and girls’ access to reproductive health care and information. Ipas Brazil, the Brazilian chapter of the international non-profit Ipas, which works to increase women’s access to sexual and reproductive health care, including safe abortions, has produced this video (in Portuguese with English subtitles) about abortion access in Brazil featuring Grupo Curumim and Jornadas. (More information about the NGOs after the jump.)

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/12671229]

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Recently, a Brazilian rancher was convicted of the murder of a nun, Dorothy Stang, who was originally from the US but became a naturalised Brazilian citizen. She had dedicated her life to the struggle to preserve not only the rain forest ecosystem but also the rights of the poor and disenfranchised living there. According to the New York Times:

Vitalmiro Moura was sentenced to 30 years for ordering the killing of 73-year-old Dorothy Stang in 2005 because she blocked him and another rancher from taking over land the government gave to farmers.

Hundreds of activists have been killed in Brazil in the last 20 years — but only about 80 triggermen, usually paid by powerful ranchers with land claims at stake, were behind bars before Tuesday. Moura is the only so-called mastermind of one of the killings to join them, raising hopes that the climate of impunity in the Amazon is finally nearing an end.

While the outcome of this trial certainly represents progress, it must not be forgotten that it is not only activists who have come from elsewhere who are killed in the conflicts over the Amazon rain forest, nor is Brazil the only nation in which such violence occurs. The Indigenous people of these lands, and Indigenous women in particular, suffer the most. Read the rest of this entry →

In metropolitan cities, it is almost impossible to notice while walking down the street how many salon signs scream out “Brazilian waxing.” If you’re so intrigued to walk into the salon and inquire about waxing, you’ll find out that there are so many different waxing options, you’ll walk out with your head spinning. Brazilian, bikini, Playboy, Brazilian tight, landing strip, the mustache, etc. Gosh, you can even wax shapes into your below the belt region. With celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Eva Longoria Parker gushing on the grooming technique and bikinis getting tinier by the season, it is hard not to ignore this widespread trend finally hitting North America.

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The Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Situation Report is a monthly column highlighting advances or setbacks in SRHR policy internationally.  This month, we’re focusing on the abortion rights context in Brazil.

Brazil has seen a recent swing to the political left, and has a socialist president.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean much for the hundreds of thouands of women who die every year because of clandestine abortions, or the thousands who have been charged and face imprisonment for undergoing safe clinical abortions.

More than a million abortions take place in Brazil every year.  That’s more than a third of all pregnancies ending in abortion, and a quarter of women who do have clandestine abortions end up in the hospital from complications.  According to this World Health Organization report, even current estimates of 1.2 million abortions per year are probably low.  In spite of this, abortion remains criminalized and penalized with prison, and public opinion on abortion remains divided. Read the rest of this entry →