Brazilian Women Demonstrate Against Proposal to Equate Abortion with Homicide

In São Paulo, Thursday's protest marched along Avenida Paulista, one of the main arteries of Brazil's largest city, with chants against Arthur Lira, the president of the Chamber of Deputies.

Hours earlier, the conservative majority of the lower house of the Brazilian parliament approved urgently debating the proposal, which would establish penalties similar to those provided for the crime of homicide for terminating a pregnancy after 22 weeks, even in the case of rape.

The urgency of the debate, approved by the conservative majority of the lower house, will allow the bill to be processed more quickly and go directly to the plenary of the chamber of deputies.

Lira told the newspaper O Globo that the project will be modified to preserve cases already protected by law and that, despite the urgency, "it will be widely debated" by deputies, of which only 17.7% are women.

Most of the protesters' posters in São Paulo read: "If men got pregnant, abortion would be legal", "legal abortion now".

In Brazil, according to current legislation, abortion is only legal in cases of rape, risk of death for the mother or if the fetus is anencephalic (malformation of the central nervous system in which there is a partial absence of the brain).

In Rio de Janeiro, hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the City Hall. A group of women brought flowers and a small coffin to the protest as a sign of mourning.

The proposal to change the Civil Code was presented by deputy Sóstenes Cavalcante, from the Liberal Party (conservative right), of former president Jair Bolsonaro, and has the support of influential evangelical churches.

"The President [Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva] sent a letter to evangelicals in the campaign saying he was against abortion. We want to see if he will veto it. Let's test Lula", said, before the vote, Sóstenes Cavalcante.

Lula da Silva's government strongly condemned the initiative. "It's very serious; a setback in women's rights," said the Minister of Women, Cida Gonçalves, on social media on Thursday.

According to Cavalcante's project, if the abortion is performed after 22 weeks of pregnancy, it will be considered "simple homicide", for which the law provides for penalties ranging between six and 20 years in prison.

The proposal argues that this classification should be applied even in cases where pregnancy is the result of rape, which generated a wave of protests from some sectors of the Brazilian left and members of the Brazilian Government.