Image: Forced pregnancy is torture!!!
“This year, we will occupy the streets and networks on September 28 in Brazil, with cultural activities, urban interventions, dialogue circles and street demonstrations […].”
In 1990, in Argentina, during the 5th Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Meeting, it was decided that September 28 would be the Latin American Day for the Decriminalization of Abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean, marking a historic day of feminist demands for the right to their own bodies, for sexual and reproductive health and for the choice over the termination of unwanted pregnancies.
Even though abortion is permitted in these situations, in practice a series of obstacles are created that make access to legal abortion services bureaucratic.
In Latin America, only eight countries allow voluntary termination of pregnancy: Argentina, French Guiana, Guyana, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay. The majority (ten countries) criminalize voluntary termination of pregnancy, although they allow the procedure in some specific cases, such as pregnancy resulting from rape, fetal malformation and risk of death to the pregnant woman, which is what happens in Brazil. However, even though abortion is permitted in these situations, in practice a series of obstacles are created that bureaucratize access to legal abortion services and lead to an intense process of revictimization and violence, perpetrated by health professionals, legal practitioners and public administrators.
In 2008, the National Front against the Criminalization of Women and for the Legalization of Abortion (FNPLA) was founded after the discovery of a family planning clinic that performed clandestine abortions in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. This episode resulted in the criminalization of more than 10,000 women, including health professionals and patients, after the case received national attention and their personal data and addresses were exposed. The National Front thus emerged as a coalition of feminist movements to simultaneously support and influence the Judiciary based on this case, which became known as the largest legal process of criminalization of women for abortion in the history of the country, and to act in a coordinated manner on actions to denounce human rights violations of women, girls and pregnant people caused by criminalization and to build the fight for the legalization of abortion as a right to be guaranteed freely, safely and free of charge by the Brazilian State.
Following this action, feminists from various organizations and social movements who were in Brasília came together and created the Paraíba Front for the Legalization of Abortion.
In 2018, the first festival for women’s lives took place in Brasília to accompany the public hearings of ADPF 442, bringing together social movements from all over the country. Based on this action, feminists from various organizations and social movements who were in Brasília came together and created the Paraíba Front for the Legalization of Abortion, which has been building territorial struggles for the decriminalization of abortion, in addition to the Paraíba festivals for women’s lives.
This year, we will occupy the streets and networks on September 28 in Brazil, with cultural activities, urban interventions, dialogue circles and street demonstrations to remember the importance of Latin American Day for the Decriminalization of Abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean as a milestone in the struggle of women, girls and pregnant women for free and legal access to legal abortion services, for the end of criminalization and perpetuation of social stigma and to denounce the human rights violations that criminalization causes in the lives of women, girls and pregnant women.
SOURCE: CFEMEA, https://www.cfemea.org.br/index.php/pt/radar-feminista-lista/direito-ao-aborto/10208-pela-vida-das-mulheres-meninas-e-pessoas-que-gestam-e-pelo-bem-viver-28-de-setembro-na-luta-por-justica-reprodutiva, 2024. VISUAL: Archive of the Paraibana Front for the Legalization of Abortion.
In João Pessoa, the festival for the lives of women, girls and people who are pregnant takes place on Saturday (28), from 4 pm, at Praça do Coqueiral, Mangabeira, with workshops, storytelling, music, poetry and a lot of fighting.
Organizing struggles, building horizons for reproductive justice.
Women have primarily pointed out the contradictions of the State’s criminalizing discourse, whether in the public demand for the legalization of abortion and the recent advances towards decriminalization in Latin America – known as the “green tide” – or in the sense of recognizing the reproductive self-determination of women and people who carry children as a pillar of Brazilian democracy, given that talking about reproductive justice also means talking about social justice and democracy.
The fight for self-determination and reproductive autonomy is a central fight for the lives of women and people who carry children. Historically, we have been the target of social persecution and our bodies have been biopolitically controlled by the State, the Church and by subjects who reproduce the logic of the oppressor, meeting an essential issue for the capitalist system: the maintenance of the social (re)production of the workforce, at different levels, which involves the biological, generational and social reproduction of lives. Gestating, giving birth, raising, educating and caring for other human beings are tasks historically associated with women, based on the unequal dynamics of gendered and racialized social relations of capitalism.
In this dynamic, the social relations that derive from this unequal economic system cause women to be overburdened with tasks that should be socialized and the responsibility of the State. Women’s reproductive control is intertwined with the monogamous and cisheteropatriarchal family model, which presents itself as the hegemonic model superimposed on countless existences in society, even in the face of advances in the field of struggles for recognition of couples from the LGBTQIAPNB+ community, which have not yet been enough to change the fact that, in Brazil, transvestites and trans people are still the most murdered, worldwide, at the same time that this same country is the one that consumes the most trans pornography in the world.
Compulsory motherhood, contradictorily linked to the genocide of the black population, selective incarceration and the precariousness of black and indigenous lives, go hand in hand, but result in different experiences around the right or not to motherhood and the right or not to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, determined by class, race and gender.
In this sense, the concept of Reproductive Justice was born in the movement of black, migrant and racialized women as non-white, in the USA, in 1994, at a conference of black women, two months after the Cairo Conference on Population and Development – a decisive milestone in guaranteeing sexual and reproductive rights at the international level.
This expanded concept of struggle that results in the idea of Reproductive Justice, which also integrates the notion of sexual and reproductive rights and social rights, arises from the recognition of the social differences between different women and people who are pregnant, which result in the need to integrate reproductive health into social justice. After all, the struggle for the liberation of women and people who are pregnant is inseparable from the control of reproduction.
When we evoke the notion of reproductive justice, we are recognizing that the struggle for the right to abortion is inseparable from the struggle for better living conditions in motherhood. This means that it is essential that a woman of color as non-white and people who are pregnant who decide to carry and give birth to a child must have access to social rights that allow this child to be born and grow up in a safe space, away from state violence, with quality education, health care, and several other social rights.
Therefore, on this September 28th, we also need to say that the fight for public services, such as daycare centers, schools, and public restaurants, for dignified living conditions, such as access to basic sanitation, public transportation, and leisure, are essential for the self-determination and reproductive autonomy of women and people who are pregnant. This fight is centered on the dispute over public funds and the demand for the expansion of social policies that can reduce social inequalities caused by capitalist oppression and exploitation.
On this September 28th, Latin American Day for the Decriminalization of Abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean, we will be at Praça do Coqueiral, in Mangabeira, João Pessoa, at the festival for the lives of women, girls, and people who are pregnant, starting at 4 pm.
For the lives of women, girls, and people who are pregnant!
For reproductive justice!
SOURCE: Carolina Ferreira, Editor. https://www.brasildefatopb.com.br/2024/09/28/pela-vida-das-mulheres-meninas-e-pessoas-que-gestam-e-pelo-bem-viver-28-de-setembro-na-luta-por-justica-reprodutiva
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