Brazilian women resort to desperate measures after abortion crackdown

(but we are constantly told there is NO war on women!)

Brazilian women resort to desperate measures after abortion crackdown

In an increasingly conservative climate, Brazilian women are risking unsafe procedures and prosecution in order to terminate pregnancies



Demonstrators demanding new laws on abortion stage a mock funeral in São Paulo. Deaths related to clandestine abortions have sparked debate in Brazil. Photograph: Rahel Patrasso/Alamy




It has been a bad few months for Ana Teresa Derraik, clinical director of Rio de Janeiro state’s leading public hospital for obstetric health. In September, three women were admitted to intensive care after having corrosive chemicals injected into their uteruses. One died, one survived. The third, a 25-year-old mother of one, lost both her feet following surgery that just managed to keep her alive.

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Abortion is illegal in Brazil, except in very limited circumstances, but demand is high. Surveys suggest between 600,000 and 1 million women undergo the procedure each year.
But experts say a major crackdown in recent years on underground clinics across Brazil, accompanied by an increasingly conservative National Congress, has made a highly risky situation even more dangerous. Women appear to be resorting to ever more desperate measures.

“There is nowhere to get a safe abortion now in Rio, no matter how much money you can pay,” says Beatriz Galli, policy adviser to international reproductive rights organisation Ipas.


Abortion in Brazil is only legally permissible – though still not necessarily easy to obtain – when a mother’s life is at risk, the pregnancy is a result of rape or the foetus has anencephaly, a condition that results in a baby being born with part of the brain and skull missing, leaving it unable to survive.
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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/dec/11/brazil-abortion-law-women-desperate-measures