Brazil is a country of contradictions. It can produce both the Brazilian Carnival and house right-wing Christian empires.
Fortunately for women, pills have changed the landscape of abortion. Abortion with pills, also known as medical abortion (MA), provides a safe, low cost and easy to use method to terminate pregnancies, and one to which access is increasing in several countries.
After notable progress on protecting equal rights one might be excused for thinking that Latin America is an accepting and safe place to live for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people. That would be the wrong conclusion.
Will Rousseff and Brazil’s other leaders summon up the will to truly stand up for women’s rights? Will they tackle one of the true solutions to high maternal mortality: decriminalization of abortion and measures that could effectively reduce deaths related to unsafe abortions?
Fundamentalist religious movements are gaining ground everywhere we look. What does it mean for human rights, and more importantly, how can we move the human rights agenda forward, effectively? A panel of experts on religion and rights examined this question at AWID 2012.
In 2002, Alyne da Silva Pimentel, a 28-year-old Afro-Brazilian woman, died after being denied basic medical care to address complications in her pregnancy. Her death might be like any one of the other hundreds of thousands of women who die of complications of pregnancy or unsafe abortion each year worldwide, but for one thing: It was taken to court.
For all of President Barack Obama’s pledges that he stands for universal human rights, the fundamental rights of women are likely to be left off the table when he visits leaders in Latin America this week.
The 2010 Brazilian presidential elections marked the first time abortion became a highly debated campaign issue and it followed a fairly American script, replete with allegations that the front runner, was a lesbian, a child-killer, a socialist.
This weekend, Brazilians elected their first female president yesterday, a woman who was a victim of government torture and later a cabinet minister. She has focused on eradicating poverty as a main goal, and was until recently a supporter of reproductive and sexual health and rights.
Brazilian women have seen important setbacks in regard to access to abortion in recent years. A clear turning point was September 2005, when a law aimed at reforming existing punitive legislation on abortion was presented to the Congress without the required support of the executive branch.
