The Chamber of Deputies of Brazil agreed this Wednesday to urgently debate a bill that proposes toughening the rules for performing an abortion, which after 22 weeks would be equated to homicide.
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The proposal was presented by deputy Sóstenes Cavalcante, of the Liberal Party (PL), led by former president Jair Bolsonaro, and proposes a modification of the Civil Code, in order to establish penalties similar to those of homicide for those women who terminate a pregnancy after 22 weeks.
Brazilian Congress.
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The urgency of the debate, approved by the conservative majority of the Lower House, It will allow the project to be processed more quickly and reach the plenary session of deputies directly.
In Brazil, according to current regulations, Abortion is legal only in cases of rape, risk of death for the mother or anencephaly of the fetus, although the right and the influential evangelical churches are fighting in Parliament to toughen these conditions.
According to the project of deputy Cavalcante, in the event that an abortion is performed after 22 weeks of pregnancy It would be considered a “simple homicide”, for which the laws provide penalties ranging between six and twenty years in prison.
The proposal maintains that this classification should be applied even in cases in which the pregnancy was the result of rape, which generated a wave of protests from progressive groups that support the Government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
If an abortion is performed after 22 weeks of pregnancy, it would be considered “simple homicide.”
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Criticism of the project that equates abortion with homicide
One of the allegations of the ruling party is that The penalty for a woman who aborts under these conditions, authorized by law today, would be even worse than that applied to rapists. which ranges between six and twelve years in prison.
The project also goes against a recent decision by a Supreme Court judge, who provisionally suspended a resolution of the Federal Council of Medicine that prohibited fetal asystole, a technique used to interrupt a pregnancy in pregnant women of more than 22 weeks. , in cases of rape.
In his decision, Judge Alexandre de Moraes clarified that, in cases of rape, “Brazilian legislation does not expressly establish any type of circumstantial, procedural or temporal limitation for the performance of the so-called legal abortion.”
More than 289,000 people “strongly disagree” with the bill
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The Government reacted through the Minister of Human Rights, Silvio Almeida, who called the proposal “immorality and inversion of the most basic values of civilization.”
Almeida considered it a “disaster” and a “provocation” that the legislative chambers discuss whether “a raped woman and the rapist have the same value for the law, or worse still, that the rapist can be considered less criminal than the raped woman.”
He added that the project is “clearly unconstitutional” because it “hurts the principle of the dignity of the human person and subjects the raped woman to unacceptable and discriminatory indignity.”
According to a survey on the bill available on the House website, More than 289,000 people “totally disagree” with the bill that criminalizes abortion after 22 weeks as a crime of homicide.
The number of those who disagree is equivalent to 79 percent of those who had voted earlier in the afternoon.
The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
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According to the available consultation, some 73,000 say they “totally agree” with the project, which represents 21% of voters.
Among the points most highlighted by the participants is that the bill is misogynistic and that abortion is a public health issue, not a religious one. The commentary explains that “those most penalized are poor women, who do not have the resources to pay for safe clinics.”
On the other hand, supporters of the law argue that it “prevents the murder of babies/fetuses for a crime they did not commit.”
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