Open AccessPolitical discourse on abortion in Brazil’s Parliament: the invisibility of women's rights
Author(s) -
Marília de Nardin Budó,
Cristina Carla Rodrigues,
Eduarda Toscani Gindri
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
oñati socio-legal series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2079-5971
DOI - 10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1162
Subject(s) - abortion , criminalization , decriminalization , parliament , human rights , invisibility , subject (documents) , reproductive rights , theme (computing) , politics , law , political science , natural (archaeology) , sociology , gender studies , history , pregnancy , computer science , biology , operating system , archaeology , library science , genetics , physics , optics
This paper presents the results of the content analysis of 25 bills that went through the Brazilian National Congress between 2015 and 2018 on the theme of criminalization and decriminalization of abortion. The objective is to describe and discuss the arguments used by the parliamentarians to support or reprove those bills. The analysis reveals that women’s reproductive rights are not protagonist of the discourse presented in the bills, which focus on the natural status of the fetus and on increasing penalties to the women who perform self-induced abortion. Even if the religious discourse is not so explicit, we can find many traces of it, though disguised behind a definition of the beginning of human life, to demarcate in time the recognition of the fetus as a subject of rights.