New York Times: Brazil’s Supreme Court Considers Decriminalizing Abortion
“…[T]he high stakes of the fight over reproductive rights … is playing out before Brazil’s Supreme Court during a rare two-day public hearing that started Friday. The court will consider whether Brazil’s abortion laws — which forbid terminating pregnancies with few exceptions, including cases of rape and instances in which the mother’s life is in peril — are at odds with constitutional protections. The hearing, which will continue Monday, is unlikely to lead to the imminent legalization of abortion. But women’s rights activists hope the public hearing will set off a high-profile debate on the issue, draw attention to the risks hundreds of thousands of women take each year as they resort to clandestine abortions, and ultimately pave the way to overhauling the existing law…” (Andreoni/Londoño, 8/3).