Lula revoked a regulation sanctioned by Jair Bolsonaro that banned legal abortion in Brazil

The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva revoked on Monday a regulation issued by the far-right Jair Bolsonaro government (2019-2022) which denied access to abortion in Brazil even in cases protected by law.

The Ministry of Health has repealed the provision, in force since September 2020, which it forced doctors and hospitals to notify the police that they were about to perform an abortion on a possible rape victim, as gazetted.

In Brazil, abortion is permitted by law only in cases of rape, when the mother’s life is in danger or the fetus is anencephalic.

However, in September 2020, the then Minister of Health, General of the Army Eduardo Pazuello, published this regulation which, in practice, added red tape and complicated voluntary outages pregnancy resulting from rape.

One of these new guidelines was that doctors should notify the “responsible police authority” of the procedure, which victims often avoid for fear of reprisals.

The text raised in its time a big controversywith convictions by political leaders and international human rights organizations, and ended up being challenged before the Supreme Court, which partially reduced its scope.

This is because it also established that, before carrying out the abortion, the pregnant woman should be offered the possibility of seeing the embryo or fetus through an ultrasound, which was later canceled by the High Court.

The case that generated the sanction of the regulation

The Ministry of Health, under the management of Bolsonaro, published this provision a few weeks after the case of a 10-year-old girl who became pregnant after being systematically raped by a boy and whose family had difficulty obtaining an abortion, despite being guaranteed by law.

The girl was finally able to undergo the operation in Recife (northeast), even if she met her outside the hospital far-right activists and politicians who staged a furious protest.

The identity of the girl and the hospital where she was hospitalized was revealed by far-right activist Sara Winter, a prominent Bolsonaro supporter who has close ties to the minister for women, family and human rights, Damares. .

According to a newspaper article Folha de São Paulothe minister has insisted on trying to delay the abortion, which she denies.

Bolsonaro’s government, which left power on 1 January when Lula succeeded him, has always declared itself “in favor of life from conception” and even some of his allies in Parliament have promoted plans to further limit abortion.

Lula said in his campaign for the October elections, which he narrowly won over Bolsonaro, that “personally he is against abortion” but that he will not address the issue during his term, that consider congressional competence.

Source: EFE and AFP