Brazil: the tightening of the law on attenuated abortion

The Brazilian government on Thursday (September 24) amended a controversial decree that posed new requirements for access to abortion for rape victims, notably removing the obligation for medical personnel to offer a woman to see the embryo or the fetus by ultrasound.

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The article including this requirement has been withdrawn in the new version of the decree published in the Official Journal.

As in the initial version of the decree, which had aroused many criticisms when it was published at the end of August, the text provides that the rape can be reported by the doctor to the police with the filing of a complaint, whether the woman wants it or not.

But this notification is no longer "

" to perform abortion, this term having been withdrawn from the new version.

At the time of the publication of the first version of the decree, on August 28, sixteen deputies had written to the head of human rights at the UN, Michelle Bachelet, asking her to intervene on behalf of the protection of women's rights.

Brazil only allows abortion in certain cases

Brazil, led by far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, and where conservative evangelical churches are particularly powerful, only allows abortion in cases of rape, danger to the woman's life or serious congenital problems of the fetus .

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The new standards were issued at the end of August by the Ministry of Health following protests over the case of a 10-year-old girl claiming to have been raped by her uncle, and to whom the authorities of her native state, Espirito Santo, refused the abortion.

She had finally taken the plane to the city of Recife (northeast), where she was able to have an abortion, but a violent far-right demonstration had taken place in front of the hospital.

The girl's identity and the name of the hospital had been passed on to protesters by far-right activist Sara Winter, a staunch supporter of Bolsonaro who is linked to the Minister for Women, Damares Alves, an evangelical pastor.