Brazil’s abor­tion policy

ON A SUNDAY after­noon last year, Gloria (not her real name) got a knock on the door. It was a former neigh­bour who said he was passing through her remote Amazon vil­lage and wanted to catch up. He pro­ceeded to drug and rape her. She did not go to the police because “they don’t invest­ig­ate rape”. After dis­cov­er­ing she was preg­nant she took the morningafter pill, but it was too late. She bought miso­prostol, an abor­tion drug, on the “dark web”, but was scammed. Even­tu­ally she found a char­ity that paid for a bus ticket to the nearest hos­pital provid­ing abor­tions, 2,500km away. “It hurt, but I felt good,” she says. “If someone from where I live finds out, my God, it would be like hav­ing a sign on my face that says ‘pros­ti­tute’.”

In the past five years most big coun­tries in Latin Amer­ica have moved towards leg­al­ising abor­tion. Argen­tina led the way in 2021, allow­ing abor­tion until the 14th week of preg­nancy. In 2022 Colom­bia fol­lowed suit. Mex­ico decrim­in­al­ised abor­tion in 2023. Brazil is now a regional out­lier. Abor­tion is per­mit­ted in the­ory if the mother’s life is at risk, if the preg­nancy was the res­ult of rape, or if the foetus has anen­cephaly, a fatal deform­ity.

In real­ity, as Gloria’s story shows, get­ting one can be all but impossible. Even the lim­ited rights of Brazilian women exist in effect “on paper”, says Helena Paro, an obstet­ri­cian. Doc­tors who provide them, like Ms Paro, are often denounced to their local med­ical coun­cil by col­leagues. Clandes­tine pro­ced­ures are the norm.

There is little sign of change. Pub­lic sup­port for abor­tion is in decline (see chart on next page). Politi­cians con­sider the sub­ject radio­act­ive, says Gab­ri­ela Rondon of the Anis Insti­tute for Bioeth­ics in Brasília, the cap­ital. Ahead of a gen­eral elec­tion in Octo­ber no one is will­ing to dis­cuss Brazil’s abor­tion policies, or the harm they are doing to women in the coun­try.

The case of one of the coun­try’s largest abor­tion pro­viders is emblem­atic. In 2023 the Vila Nova Cachoeir­inha mater­nity hos­pital in São Paulo was ordered to stop offer­ing abor­tions by city author­it­ies. Two of its doc­tors had their licences sus­pen­ded for “killing foetuses”. The city’s right-wing mayor alleged that the hos­pital had car­ried out illegal abor­tions. Yet the agency that reg­u­lates São Paulo’s med­ical centres had not received a single report of illegal abor­tions at the hos­pital, accord­ing to Agência Pública, an invest­ig­at­ive out­let. It took two years to reopen the facil­ity.

Many con­gress­men want to make abor­tion even harder to access. In 2024 a prom­in­ent evan­gel­ical deputy tabled a bill that would have equated abor­tion after 22 weeks with murder, with a pen­alty of up to 20 years in prison—higher than the max­imum pen­alty for rape. The bill was being.

fast-tracked through Con­gress before pro­test­ers stalled it. It is often raped chil­dren who seek late-term abor­tions. Around 14,000 girls aged 14 or younger give birth every year in Brazil.

Research by Debora Diniz of the Uni­versity of Brasília sug­gests that nearly 15% of women in Brazil have an abor­tion before turn­ing 40, des­pite the bar­ri­ers. The real rate is prob­ably higher, she says, since she sur­veyed lit­er­ate, urban women. Rich women tend to fly to Argen­tina for abor­tions, or pay private doc­tors for an illegal one. Poor women often turn to unreg­u­lated pro­viders oper­at­ing out of back-street clin­ics. This con­trib­utes to Brazil’s mater­nal mor­tal­ity rate, which is higher than in any other large Latin Amer­ican coun­try.

Pub­lic sup­port for abor­tion is declin­ing even as reli­gious affil­i­ation wanes. The share of evan­gel­ical Chris­ti­ans in Brazil held steady at around 27% between 2014 and 2024. At the same time the share of “nones”—those who say they are athe­ist, agnostic or reli­giously unaf­fili­ated—doubled to 15%, accord­ing to the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank based in Wash­ing­ton.

Yet the reli­gious groups are bet­ter organ­ised. In the dec­ade to 2024 the evan­gel­ical caucus in Con­gress quad­rupled, to include 210 of 513 rep­res­ent­at­ives. Cath­ol­ics, whose num­bers have fallen dra­mat­ic­ally in the past three dec­ades, have copied the evan­gel­ic­als’ tac­tics, and their Con­gres­sional caucus now has 199 mem­bers. The two denom­in­a­tional blocs, whose mem­ber­ship over­laps, often vote together on issues such as abor­tion and gay rights. Mean­while the “nones” have no caucus. It does not help that only 17% of lower-house mem­bers are women, com­pared with 30% in Colom­bia and half in Mex­ico. “The dif­fi­culty of get­ting repro­duct­ive rights dis­cussed is that women are under-rep­res­en­ted in the halls of power,” says Ms Paro.

In Colom­bia, where pub­lic sup­port for abor­tion is also weak, it was the Supreme Court that leg­al­ised the pro­ced­ure. That path looks less likely than ever in Brazil. The stand­ing of the Supreme Court has been plum­met­ing thanks to cor­rup­tion scan­dals and judi­cial over­reach, mak­ing judges par­tic­u­larly wor­ried about repris­als from Con­gress. A case to decrim­in­al­ise abor­tion up to 12 weeks has been before the court since 2017. So far only two justices have ruled on it, both in favour. The oth­ers are yet to vote (Brazil’s highest court allows judges to rule sep­ar­ately) and there are no plans to hold a full hear­ing. There will prob­ably be no more votes before the gen­eral elec­tion. Brazil’s small pro-choice move­ment is focus­ing on high­light­ing indi­vidual cases involving girls, as well as mak­ing it easier to access exist­ing rights, such as in rape cases. One case before the Supreme Court could allow nurses to carry out abor­tions, instead of only doc­tors.

“The pro-life stance is easy,” says Ms Rondon. “Nobody asks you for proof of how many creches you built dur­ing your term, or how much sup­port you are actu­ally provid­ing infants and moth­ers.” Her struggle will remain ardu­ous for many years to come.