For her first abortion, Anna went to a clandestine clinic in the south zone of Rio de Janeiro where a doctor bungled the procedure and left her needing further treatment. Years later, no trace remains of the now-defunct clinic, yet memories of the experience still stir anxiety.

“Even if the service was good, you knew you could go to prison if you were found out,” says Anna, who wanted to be known only by her first name. “And if something went wrong, who could you ask for help? There was no one.”

Amid the febrile political climate of a presidential election year, the abortion debate is simmering in Brazil, where women’s rights campaigners are braced for laws that could further reduce their scant reproductive rights and push even more into unsafe, sometimes life-threatening abortions.

As many as one in five women in Brazil are estimated to have had an abortion, which is currently a crime except after rape, when the woman’s life is at risk, or if the foetus has anencephaly, a congenital brain disorder. Every year, hundreds of thousands of women risk their lives to end pregnancies.

According to health ministry data, more than 900 girls or women died of unsafe abortions between 2005 and 2017 – but media reports suggest the true number may be as high as four fatalities a day.



“Some women manage [abortion] correctly, but some arrive at hospital with their lives in the balance,” says Dr Ana Teresa Derraik Barbosa, director of a maternity hospital in the low-income Baixada Fluminense area.

Barbosa sees up to 60 women a month who have had abortions, sometimes with devastating consequences. One harrowing case involved a 25-year-old single mother of two who had developed an infection after trying to induce an abortion with a caustic substance. Doctors saved her life by removing her uterus, but necrosis spread. Both feet had to be amputated.

Barbosa, who also runs a clinic in affluent Ipanema, says many poorer, mainly black women who can’t pay to secure safe abortions are much worse affected by the draconian laws. In addition, women of limited means are often unaware that they qualify for legal abortion in cases where they were raped. Education on gender violence is part of the drive to legalise abortion.

“In these discussions about a ban on abortion, it becomes impossible to have a reasonable debate,” says Barbosa. She advocates legalising abortion and giving women and girls access to information on contraceptives and “the support to reflect on their choices”, adding that Brazil’s failure to lower maternal mortality points to the urgency of tackling access to abortion in conjunction with teenage pregnancy and sexual violence. “We are fighting just to hold on to the rights we have,” says Barbosa.

In November, a congressional committee voted in favour of PEC 181, a constitutional amendment banning abortion in all cases. The sole woman among the 19 committee members was also the only dissenting voice. She was soon joined by thousands of other women, who took to the streets in protest. The bill, on hold because of other political crises, is among several proposed laws that attack reproductive rights. To become law, it must win approval in two chambers of congress.



The stance on abortion can be a matter of political expediency among the evangelical Christian and Catholic members of congress, whose views resonate with conservative voters, says Professor Debora Diniz, founder of the Institute of Bioethics, Human Rights and Gender (Anis) in Brasilia. A recent study showed that, even as the campaign for legalisation has gathered momentum, only one in four Brazilians are in favour of women having the right to choose for themselves.

As part of that drive, Anis last year invited women to share their stories of secret abortion on a blog, Eu vou contar. One response came from Rebeca Mendes, a 30-year-old mother of two from São Paulo, who decided she could not support another child and feared an illegal abortion might risk her life. She took her case for abortion to the supreme court in a case dubbed the Roe v Wade of Brazil. She lost and had a termination in Colombia, but helped to smash a taboo.

“Brazilians need to see that abortion is a fact of a woman’s life and those who suffer the most prejudice are poor women who are going to have abortions, whether society wants them to or not, whether religion permits them to or not. We can’t continue to be victims of the hypocrisy of our society,” says Mendes.

It was a significant breakthrough, says Diniz. “This was the first time in Latin America and the Caribbean that a woman has taken her case for abortion to the supreme court, not because she was raped or anything like that but to fight for her fundamental rights. Rebeca is not from a feminist textbook. Before her, it had always been wealthy white women [who spoke out]. She is from an ordinary community in São Paulo, she is the breadwinner and has two children. She knows the meaning of motherhood. She did not want to put her life at risk [with an unsafe abortion].”

If the campaign to legalise abortion now has a public face in Mendes, it remains unclear how the issue could play out in the months leading to October’s presidential elections. Last month, Marina Silva, a candidate who is anti-abortion, softened her position by saying that women who aborted babies did not need to go to prison. This is significant, says Laura Molinari of the Nossas thinktank. At the same time, says Molinari, the recent murder of Rio councillor and human rights activist Marielle Franco has left “more people feeling disposed to fight [for their rights]”.

For two reasons, Diniz is optimistic. “Firstly, look at Argentina, our close neighbour, where there is a very conservative president who has begun to open up the discussion about reproductive rights. Second, we have a new generation of women who were born feminists – millennial women. This is their fight.”

But Anna, who had a second secret abortion at another clinic, fears the worst. “In this conservative climate, we might end up with a total ban. My main worry is the quality of abortion services and the impact of a ban on women’s health.”

Reporting for this story was made possible by a residency at Casa Pública provided by Agencia Pública