A new law has just come into force in Rio de Janeiro requiring all public hospitals and clinics run by the municipal government to display anti-abortion signs bearing messages such as: “Did you know that the unborn child is discarded as hospital waste?”
Reproductive rights activists view the act as the latest example of a growing trend across Brazil to further restrict access to abortion in a country that already has some of the world’s most restrictive laws.
In Latin America’s largest country, abortion is only legal in cases of rape, when the pregnant person’s life is at risk, or if the foetus has anencephaly, a fatal brain disorder.
In recent years, however, politicians, doctors and even judges have taken steps to prevent abortions even in those circumstances.
Brazil’s main hospital for such procedures, in São Paulo, stopped offering terminations after a decision by the city’s mayor, a staunch supporter of former president Jair Bolsonaro, a strident anti-abortion advocate.
A congressman from his party proposed a bill punishing abortions after 22 weeks – even in cases of rape or risk to life – with up to 20 years in prison.
The federal medical council, which is reportedly dominated by Bolsonaro loyalists, last year banned doctors from using the safest method recommended by the World Health Organization for pregnancies over 22 weeks – a measure later deemed illegal by Brazil’s supreme court.
“This is a direct result of the Bolsonaro years in power,” said anthropologist Debora Diniz, a professor at the University of Brasília and one of the country’s leading reproductive rights researchers and activists.
She acknowledges that the dispute between pro- and anti-abortion positions is not new.
Diniz herself had to leave the country in 2018 after receiving death threats for her involvement in a campaign to push the supreme court to discuss decriminalising abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy – a reform that ultimately stalled.
What has changed now, she says, is that the issue, once confined to the federal level, has become “scattered” across local and regional authorities.
“Authoritarian governments in Latin America have a particular trait: they don’t just disappear when their leader leaves office. Bolsonaro may be gone, but forces aligned with him and his ideas have occupied bodies like the medical council,” said Diniz.
Such attempts are even more harmful given that legal abortion is not widely available across Brazil – only 4% of Brazilian cities have facilities and trained professionals to carry out the procedure, and that does not include even all state capitals.
In the state of Goiás, a 13-year-old girl who had been raped turned to the courts after she was denied a legal abortion at a hospital, but a judge prohibited any method that would induce the death of the foetus. A higher court eventually authorised the abortion.
In that state, the governor – also a Bolsonaro loyalist – signed a law requiring women seeking a legal abortion to first listen to the foetal heartbeat.
Rio’s anti-abortion signs law was approved last Friday by Mayor Eduardo Paes – who is not a Bolsonaro supporter and is aligned with the current leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The mayor’s decision not to veto the law – which was proposed by three far-right city councillors – is being seen as a political move, as he is expected to run for state governor next year.
Under the law, hospitals providing abortions must also display signs saying: “You have the right to give your baby up for adoption anonymously … Give life a chance!” and “Abortion can lead to consequences such as infertility, psychological problems, infections and even death.”
Diniz said the second sign was even more problematic as there is no scientific evidence that abortion, when carried out safely and with medical support, causes any of those effects.
“This law is perverse because it is based on a false narrative of ‘care’ for women and girls, when in fact it is persecuting them,” said Diniz.
On Tuesday, a public prosecutor filed a lawsuit arguing that the law is unconstitutional and requesting that the city government be barred from putting up the signs. The case is yet to be reviewed by a judge.