In Brazil, not surprisingly, abortion has once again flared up in the path towards the next Brazilian presidential election campaign. The presidential candidate of the PSB, Eduardo Campos, said during a Catholic mass in the Basilica of Aparecida do Norte, that he is against abortion and that Brazilian law as it is is not to be changed.
To recall the virulent terms of debates on abortion in the 2010 elections check here.
Eduardo Campos speech, at a Catholic event, once again revealed the role, extension and effect of dogmatic religious positions on the Brazilian politics around abortion. Positively enough however, his speech has generated insighftul reactions on various quarters. The journalist Eliane Brum, in an article in El País, examined with great lucidity why abortion is to be addressed as a public health issue. She called the candidate to also consider in his reflections the lives of women that have to resort to clandestine and unsafe abortions and who risk imprisonment and social stigma. She also criticized the effects of dogmatic religious discourses that aim to impose their views on all citizens.
The philosophy professor Carla Rodrigues has also written about Eduardo Campos speech act, underlining the bad faith of his argument. For Rodrigues: “No one is in ‘favor of abortion’, as the anti–abortion forces characterize the advocates of legal abortion. The feminist struggle is not for abortion to become a contracpetive method, it is about decriminalizing women who abort and Campos knows that very well”, she wrote.
