How Brazilian TV Furthered Abortion Education While the Government Tried to Ban the Procedure

Can you imagine a country in which it’s more common for a woman to undergo an illegal medical procedure than is to finish college? This is exactly what happens in Brazil, where as many as 20% of adult Brazilian women have had an abortion, but only 12% have a college degree.

Abortion is allowed in the country in three cases: when the pregnancy is the result of rape, when the woman’s life is in danger (as in the case of an ectopic pregnancy), or if the fetus has been diagnosed with anencephaly (meaning the fetus’ brain is not properly developed). Following those guidelines, only about 1,600 legal abortions are performed every year in Brazil.

Yet the number of women receiving abortions is much higher: As previously mentioned, a 2016 report revealed that one in five adult Brazilian women has had at least one abortion, which amounts to at least half a million women every year. Given that the practice is illegal, the number may be much higher.

In the beginning of 2019, President Jair Bolsonaro created the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights. Damares Alves, a long-time pro-life advocate obsessed with banning abortion in Brazil, was chosen as minister. In the first year of her term, she sued journalists who wrote about legal abortion and praised groups that harass women who seek legal abortions.

Meanwhile, the current Congress (the most conservative one since 1988) proposed 18 anti-abortion bills in 2019 alone. Some of these bills would ban contraceptives like IUDs and morning-after pills, while others would totally ban abortion in all cases. As congresswoman Chris Tonietto said when presenting her bill last October, “an abortion can’t unrape a woman” and “at least the rapist left the woman alive.”

Such attacks on reproductive rights in the wake of the right-wing victories in the 2018 election have been no surprise. What perhaps fewer Brazilians expected was how Brazilian media has continued to discuss abortion despite this political context. On the one hand, Brazilian TV has always been educational: For decades, TV series, and especially soap operas, have educated millions of viewers about subjects such as drug abuse, racism, and violence against women — subjects that are rarely discussed elsewhere in Brazilian society. And recently, abortion has been no exception.

In October, the soap opera Bom Sucesso introduced a plotline in which a character named Nana, played by the actress Fabiula Nascimento, found out she was pregnant. Nana already had a preteen daughter and had just divorced her abusive husband — Diogo, the villain — only to find out he had given her fake contraceptives. While talking to her friend, Nana said something that ignited controversy:

“It’s not a baby yet. It’s only an embryo. It doesn’t have a nervous system, it doesn’t have a heart, it isn’t a human being yet. I’m not pro-abortion, nobody is. But I want to decide about my body, about my life.”

Since this character’s husband replaced her contraceptives with fake pills, Nana experienced reproductive coercion and as such could access abortion legally. Nevertheless, right after the scene aired, a state prosecutor criticized the soap opera and threatened to sue the network. Six days later, an inquiry was opened accusing the network of “abortion propaganda.” Five chapters later in the series, Nana had started to accept her pregnancy when she fell down the stairs at her workplace and suffered a miscarriage, a conclusion to the storyline that follows the “good girls don't have abortions” TV trope. By the last chapter of the show, Nana found a new urge for motherhood after her loss, and happily marries and becomes pregnant.

In early November, an episode of Segunda Chamada, or Second Call, a more serious and realistic TV series, opened with the character Rita, played by Nanda Costa, going to a public hospital. A young mother of three, she wants to schedule a tubal ligation surgery. After a lot of waiting, a doctor appears with the result of her latest exams and tells her coldly, “We can't operate on you now. You're pregnant.”

Rita, who is shocked by the news, then goes to see two teachers — Marco and Sonia — at the night school she attends. At first she tells them she's not feeling well, but as her cramps get worse she says, lying on the floor of the teachers’ room, that she has taken abortion pills. Sonia and Marco take her to a nearby hospital, where Marco's adoptive mother is a physician who promises to take care of Rita, who is losing a lot of blood. While they wait, Marco asks Sonia if she is “pro-abortion,” to which Sonia responds, “It's not about being pro or against it. Abortion exists. But the ones who die without medical care are people like Rita.”

A while later, two policemen arrive at the hospital and ask the teachers questions. Marco realizes his mother betrayed his trust and called them. This moment portrays the reality in Brazil that many women arrested for illegal abortions are turned in by doctors or nurses, even though the professional medical ethic code doesn't allow them to do that. After this questioning, Marco's mother comes back to tell them that Rita didn't survive.

Second Call was praised online for this raw portrayal of the reality of abortion in Brazil, and the episode broke its own ratings record — and no threats were made against those involved in the show. Because it didn’t rely on clichés or sentimentality, Rita’s plot sharply showed the that women who are caught having illegal abortions in Brazil are all too likely to either die or be arrested. Every year, over half a million Brazilian women prefer to risk dying or going to jail instead of facing the torture of an unwanted pregnancy.

These two examples show us that only by facing the facts we can discuss abortion not only as a choice, but as a matter of public health. Lawmakers may not be open to conversation, but Brazilian TV, once again, addressed the elephant in the room and ignited a debate that many are trying to silence.