An 11-Year-Old Girl Was Denied an Abortion in Brazil

Almost two years ago, the story of a 10-year-old Brazilian girl who became pregnant after her uncle raped her and was nearly denied a legal abortion shocked the world. At the time, the organization Sangra Coletiva started an online campaign using the hashtag #GravidezAos10Mata, which means “Pregnancy at 10 Kills,” to support the girl. While the girl finally accessed the procedure, later reports revealed that people in high positions in the far-right government worked hard to deny the girl an abortion.

Now, history is repeating itself. On June 20, a joint investigation from The Intercept Brazil and the website Portal Catarinas found that an 11-year-old (who has remained anonymous) had not only been denied an abortion after becoming pregnant as a result of rape but was also separated from her mother, who was vocal about terminating the pregnancy, and sent to foster care.

Two days after the pregnancy was discovered, according to this report, the girl went with her mother to a nearby hospital in the state of Santa Catarina to access an abortion. In Brazil, abortion is legally allowed in cases of rape as well as when a pregnant person’s life is in danger or if the fetus has anencephaly, but the procedure is punishable by up to three years in prison if done for any other reason. The staff at the hospital in Santa Catarina claimed that they provided legal abortions only until 20 weeks of pregnancy; the girl was 22 weeks pregnant. In reality, there is no term limit for the procedure established in the Brazilian Penal Code.

The hospital sent the girl’s case to a judge to decide if she had the right to an abortion or not. The judge, a woman, asked the girl, “Could you stand to stay [pregnant] just for a little longer?” and also asked if she wanted to choose the baby’s name and if the baby’s father would agree to an adoption. “We have 30,000 couples who want the baby, who accept the baby,” the judge said. “This sadness today for you [the girl’s mother] and your child is happiness for a couple.” Ultimately, she ruled that the girl shouldn’t have the abortion and justified sending the child to foster care to keep her far from her rapist.

This case quickly generated public outrage. The hashtags #NãoSuportamosMais (“We Can’t Stand Anymore”) and #CriançaNãoÉMãe (“A Child Is Not a Mother”) began trending on Twitter. Feminist collective Coletivo Juntas created a petition asking for the girl to have her right to a legal abortion guaranteed and also for the judge to be suspended from the case. In less than 24 hours, the petition got more than 200,000 signatures and multiple groups organized in-person protests calling for the decriminalization and legalization of abortion in Brazil. These protests occurred in the following days in several cities, including São Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, Florianópolis, the capital of the state the girl lives in, and Brasília, the capital of the country. In Brasília, the protest happened in front of the Supreme Court, where a case that could decriminalize abortion has been waiting for deliberation since 2018.

The petition and protests have been successful: The petition now has more than 300,000 signatures, and the day after The Intercept Brazil and Portal Catarinas’ story was published, the girl was taken out of foster care and reunited with her mother. A district attorney ruled that she had the right to a legal abortion, and on June 22, at 29 weeks pregnant, the girl finally had access to the procedure.

Significantly, this case happened right in the middle of increased attacks on abortion in both Brazil’s government and abroad. The same week, Politico leaked an opinion indicating that Roe v. Wade would be overturned in the USA. Four days later, the Statute of the Unborn, a Brazilian bill that seeks not only to ban abortion, but also to send pro-choice activists to jail, was passed by the Commission of Human Rights from the House of Representatives and is now back at discussion in the House.

During this case, the secretary of primary attention from the Ministry of Health (a staunch anti-abortion doctor) also published a new booklet about abortion that included several outdated recommendations out of touch with the guidelines issued by the World Health Organization. One recommendation, for example, encourages health care workers to denounce and criminally investigate pregnant people seeking abortions. Another discourages abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy, a limit that is arbitrary and does not exist in the country’s law.

The booklet was criticized by several institutions, including the Brazilian branch of the organization Doctors for Choice. Because of this criticism, the Ministry of Health summoned a hearing about the legality of the booklet. The hearing happened on June 28 but did not include participants from the civil society or from the institutions that criticized the document. Twelve of 20 speakers at the hearing were anti-choice; even the judge who ruled against the 11-year-old was invited to talk, but she did not show up. During the hearing, the 11-year-old’s case was brought up several times by anti-abortion speakers, who condemned the outcome of the case and used the hearing as a platform to engage with conservative voters. Speakers at the hearing also defined abortion as “a medical rape that steals motherhood from a woman,” and referred to the morning-after pill as an abortion-inducing pill.

The anthropologist Débora Diniz commented that the hearing was used to position abortion as a key issue in upcoming Brazilian elections, as this year is a general election year in the country. All the House of Representatives seats will be up for grabs this coming October, as well as one-third of the Senate, all governors, and the presidency. The main presidential candidates are Jair Bolsonaro, the current president of Brazil who is firmly anti-abortion, and Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, a former president who has recently declared that abortion should be treated as a health care issue, not a religious one. About the 11-year-old’s case, Lula made no comment, but Bolsonaro tweeted, “A baby of SEVEN MONTHS of pregnancy, you don’t discuss the way it was conceived, if she [the girl] is or isn’t secured by law. It’s unacceptable to talk about taking the life of this defenseless being!”

Ultimately, this girl’s case shows that decriminalizing abortion in Brazil isn’t enough. There still needs to be a huge effort to change minds so personal beliefs don’t get in the way of pregnant people’s rights.