The pregnant woman who tries to access the legal one should receive a controversial offer from the state: listen to the heartbeat of the fetus. The law was sanctioned at the beginning of last year by the governor and presidential, in the context of what was called the “abortion awareness campaign.”
Similar legislations were proposed in other states and cities of the country, as well as in which it follows a project to institute a protocol entitled “Listen to the heart. Do not abort”.
The invention is not Brazilian. In the American state of Kentucky, doctors have been required by law since 2017 to show the fetal beat to pregnant women before following the procedure. In do, the requirement was valid in 2022.
The dissemination of public policies is not coincidental and reveals the importance of the theme to the right and the far right global.
Two years after the Supreme Court of the United States decide that abortion, paving the way for the states to veto the procedure, Brazil has again followed articulated initiatives in the Para.
Abortion is allowed in the country when there is a risk to the pregnant woman’s life and in case of rape and anencephaly, regardless of the time of pregnancy.
Last June, the, which provided for criminalizing the interruption of pregnancies over 22 weeks in all cases, had an urgent request approved in the House plenary. The text faced strong resistance from civil society and.
Right deputies, however, did not give up the subject and, at the end of November, the CCJ (Constitution and Justice Commission) to include in the letter the inviolability of the right to life “from conception” – which, in practice, may prevent access to abortion even in the cases provided for by law. The proposal still needs to be voted in plenary and, if approved, goes to the Senate.
Fostering sensitive guidelines such as abortion is a strategy of these parliamentarians to demarcate space in Congress and mobilize their electoral bases, says political scientist Lilian Seretti, a researcher at CEBRAP.
“This gives the visibility they need within the ecosystem of the far right, which is competitive today. It is very difficult to gain majority election with this agenda, but it is not difficult to win the legislature with more extremist guidelines,” he says.
It makes, however, one caveat: attempts to reverse the right to abortion in cases already guaranteed by law find resistance and should not prosper. Still, the theme will continue to be instrumentalized for electoral gains, including 2026, as well as others that tangent gender issues.
“It is an agenda that mobilizes sensitivities of this electorate. But the issue of legal abortion for rape cases also mobilizes, and it is difficult to back down in such an open way. I think a less controversial agenda within the far right is that of them, which creates fear in people. “
The negative reaction to abortion and connecting to the ideological bases of the radical right, which historically centralizes the protection of heterosexual families as one of their pillars and a means of mobilization of the electorate.
The fascist experiences of the 20th century already rejected abortion by seeing it as an obstacle to the maintenance of the family-the reproductive function of women was considered central to the stability and progress of the nation. The defense of order and authority in a fascist conception also involves the defense of patriarchy within families and, consequently, the control of female bodies.
A, for example, banned abortion among “Aryan” women and approved legal incentives and decorations to stimulate marriage and birth rate.
Today the negative reaction to the procedure is packed in different ways by the radical right, depending on the local reality. In Europe and the United States, it is often associated with racism and.
One of the connecting points occurs with the conspiracy theory called “”, which argues that there is a plan of progressive elites to replace the white population in the West with non -white immigrants. In this sense, the restriction on abortion among white women would be a way to increase the birth rate and prevent the country’s taking by foreigners.
Hungary, the country to which the former president referred, is a reference for the far right global because encouraging a conservative family idea associated with rejection of immigrants.
There, the government has adopted policies to encourage Hungarian heterosexual families to have children – members under 30 or with four children or more do not pay income tax.
In Brazil and other nations where immigration is not a central problem, the instrumentalization of the agenda on the right gains moral and religious contours.
Global differences, however, do not prevent field leaders from forming ties and unite in mobilizing abortion.
In 2019, for example, the demographic summit of Budapest, Hungary, was attended by today senator and then Minister of Women of the Bolsonaro government (Republicans-DF). The event, which has taken place since 2015, discusses the low birth rate of the country, defending as a solution the incentive to the heterosexual family model.
At the summit, Damares spoke about the fight against the so-called “gender ideology” and the right to abortion and made a call to conservative countries: “I could not help but take this opportunity to invite all states represented here to join themselves to We in the formation of a group of family -friendly countries, for the United Nations to defend and rescue the values that some sectors often tend to ignore. “
