Bill equating abortion after 22 weeks to homicide shelved for 2 months in Brazil after controversy

SÃO PAULO, Brazil (OSV News) — A bill to equate abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy to homicide has been causing controversy in Brazil, with wide segments of society expressing their dissatisfaction with it, including Catholics who said it was more political PR than true help for pregnant women.

The proposal received so much criticism from feminist organizations and progressive groups that Congressman Arthur Lira, president of the Chamber of Deputies, announced June 18 that it will only be analyzed again in August after the July break.

On June 14, the Brazilian bishops’ conference, known by the Portuguese acronym CNBB, issued a statement in which it defended the proposal without getting involved in the “ideologization of such debate.” The bishops affirmed, however, they still “await the processing of other bills that guarantee all rights of the unborn child and pregnant woman.”

“It is worth highlighting that 22 weeks does not correspond to an arbitrary milestone. From this gestational age, after delivery, many babies survive. So why kill them? … Let us allow the woman and the baby to live,” CNBB’s declaration read.

Despite the Brazilian bishops’ stance, some Catholics think that imposing a limitation only on abortions performed after 22 weeks of pregnancy somehow implies that there is no problem in carrying them out before that.

Others consider that the bill was not really conceived to reduce the number of abortions performed in Brazil, but to create political embarrassments for left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government and that it made it impossible to discuss other serious pro-life bills in a country in flames over the current abortion debate.

The effort doesn’t seem to have much social support either in Catholic Brazil. A survey on the Chamber of Deputies’ website, which has drawn more than 1 million votes, showed June 19 that 88 percent of the participants opposed it.

The bill, introduced by Congressman Sóstenes Cavalcante, an evangelical, and 32 other signatories, was approved June 12 to be voted on under a “regime of urgency.” This way, it doesn’t need to be analyzed and approved by different Chamber of Deputies’ commissions before being sent to the assembly, where it will be voted on by Congress members.

Only in three cases can abortion be legally performed in Brazil currently: if the woman gets pregnant as a consequence of rape; if the pregnancy endangers her health; or if the fetus is anencephalic, a serious birth defect in which a baby is born without parts of the brain and skull. There’s no time limit for the procedure in such cases.

The new proposal determines that legal abortions can only be performed until 22 weeks of pregnancy. It also establishes a sentence of up to 20 years in prison for mothers and doctors, or other health care professionals, who carry out abortions after that, the same sentence applied to homicide.

The current law carries penalties of one to three years in prison for a mother who undergoes an illegal abortion; one to four years in prison for the doctor or other person who conducts the abortion; and three to 10 years in prison for a person who performs an abortion without the mother’s consent.

The proposal, dubbed “Child Pregnancy Bill” by its opponents, has been fiercely criticized by feminist movements and left-wing activists. In Brazil, almost 75,000 cases of rape were reported in 2022, and 60 percent of the victims are under 13 years old. Many of these victims are attacked at home by family members and end up getting pregnant.

Protests against the bill were carried out in at least six state capitals June 13. Critics of the bill said the new law would be harsher on the victim of rape than on the rapist, who can receive a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

Congressman Cavalcante, an Assembly of God theologian and an ally of former President Jair Bolsonaro, told the press that he would defend the inclusion of higher penalties for rapists in his bill.

The controversial bill has created divides among pro-life movements and Catholic activists.

“Congressman Sóstenes Cavalcante told the press that his bill poses a test to Lula and his commitment to Christian values that he announced during the 2022 campaign,” recalled religion sociologist Francisco Borba Ribeiro Neto, a Catholic activist who formerly headed the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo’s Center of Faith and Culture.

“The defense of life is a non-negotiable principle. It cannot be used for politics because it’s a goal in itself. So, that bill has a vice of origin. It was formulated to attack the left. That distortion is creating the current problems,” he reasoned.

In his opinion, tougher penalties for people who undergo abortions won’t stop them from doing so, “because in general they either conscientiously disrespect the law or are desperate.”

“Those who will be really impacted are the victims of rape. They’re the people who would be punished if the law is approved,” Ribeiro Neto said.

Many of those people are underage women whose families are under great psychological pressure. For most of them, he went on, giving up the baby for adoption would be the most acceptable solution. But pro-life movements usually face obstacles to reach those families.

“Establishing a law to make it easier for those families to opt for adoption would be a much more effective measure, and all real pro-lifers know that,” Ribeiro Neto said, adding that Cavalcante didn’t think about such an idea “because that wouldn’t create a challenge for the government.”

Now, despite a mostly conservative Congress, the approval of an encompassing law to protect the unborn child — the final goal of Brazilian pro-lifers — is at least two more years away “due to the mistakes that were committed,” Ribeiro Neto said.

“Several aspects of a bill like that could not survive a public campaign now, because they would be seen as measures that could criminalize the mother,” he lamented.

In the opinion of Lenise Garcia, a Catholic activist and the head of the pro-life movement Brazil Without Abortion, limiting abortions to 22 weeks of pregnancy is a policy that could be seen as more acceptable by many Brazilians. But the idea of increasing prison penalties was “unfortunate,” she said.

“That’s the measure that’s creating all those negative reactions,” she told OSV News.

In her opinion, the proposal may end up being reformulated and the matter of the penalty will probably be removed, therefore, despite the current opposition to the bill, it may end up bringing good results, she said.

“We’ll continue struggling for the approval of the unborn child’s act. That’s the real solution for all such problems” she concluded.

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