In the summer of 2023, 26-year-old Matheus terminated his pregnancy at a friend’s house. Matheus, who identifies as nonbinary and uses he/she pronouns, said he made the decision because he felt unsafe with the person he had sex with, and the pregnancy triggered his gender dysphoria.
Despite the toll the pregnancy would have taken on Matheus’ mental health – not his real name – what he did was illegal. In Brazil abortions are criminalized, except in cases where the pregnancy is a result of rape, the life of the pregnant person is at risk, and in cases of fetal anencephaly – a fatal birth defect. Violating the penal code can carry a prison sentence of up to three years.
Despite the risk of imprisonment, multiple gender and abortion rights activists told CNN, some women as well as trans men prefer to end their pregnancies illegally, even if some of them could qualify for the legal exceptions. This way, they avoid both the stigma they have historically faced while seeking an abortion and the requisite assessments by a multidisciplinary health team including a doctor and a psychologist which are arduous and can be traumatic.
In 2023, as many as 213 people were prosecuted in Brazil for self-inducing abortion or performing abortion with the person’s consent, according to the National Council of Justice, a public institution tasked with improving Brazilian judicial system. In a 2023 study on trans people’s access to legal abortions, Helio Oliveria, a retired bioethics professor, said he didn’t find a single publicly recorded case of a trans person accessing abortion legally in Brazil. “I don’t know if there were actually no legal abortions, perhaps because their abortions were denied, or trans abortions were just recorded as women’s abortions,” Oliveira told CNN.
Such ongoing discrimination can have consequences for transmasculine people accessing medical care beyond abortion healthcare. For example, Matheus developed a vaginal yeast infection following the abortion, but he said he put off going to see a doctor, fearing the doctor might find out about his abortion. When he finally did go to a doctor, he said nothing of having taken misoprostol. “I was afraid of being reported [to police],” he told CNN. “It’s tough because while I want to tell the truth, I can’t.”
A 2021 study analyzing 43 court records from 2017 to 2019 in the state of Paraná, where women were prosecuted for self-induced abortion, found that 44% of the women in those cases were reported to the police by health professionals and 65% had their medical records delivered to the police without their consent.
A 2018 study found that discrimination they had experienced at some point in the past made trans and gender diverse people almost seven times more likely to later avoid health services altogether. And this is still very much the case today, said Dan Kaio Lemos, a trans activist and PhD candidate at the University of Brasília. “Anti-trans movements attack us daily and parliamentary conservatism blocks our demands…“The system doesn’t understand a pregnant man.”….
While there is no data on trans or gender-diverse people accessing abortions in Brazil, nearly one in every seven Brazilian women are estimated to have had an abortion by the age of 40, with over 40% needing to be hospitalized to finalize their abortions, according to the most recent National Abortion Survey. 52% of respondents were 19 years old or younger when they had their first abortion. The same survey found that abortion rates were higher among women “with lower educational levels, Black and Indigenous women, and women residing in poorer regions.” Black Brazilian women are two times more likely than White Brazilian women to die during an unsafe abortion because they are “more likely to have one in the first place,” found a report by Amnesty International.
But there is a ray of hope. Some activists and NGOs are trying to build bridges between different groups. Tabata Tesser who works with Catholics for the Right to Decide, an NGO, said she is passionate about helping Brazilians with strong religious beliefs to reconcile them with the sexual and reproductive healthcare for people of all genders.
Public awareness of the reproductive health needs of trans men is slowly growing. A march organised earlier in the year was attended by ten thousand people, according to the Brazilian Institute of Transmasculinities (IBRAT). Some people were carrying signs that read: “Legal and safe abortion for everyone with a uterus!” and “Transmasculine people also have abortions!” The bodily autonomy exercised by trans people contributes to the fight for abortion rights for all in Brazil, Lemos said.
SOURCE: CNN, by Alice McCool.
PHOTO by Carla Carniel/Reuters: Trans March, part of LGBTQ+ Pride celebrations, São Paulo, 31 May 2024.