the right to abortion, a taboo subject, invites itself into the campaign

Every Thursday, the evangelical pastor Carlos Alberto hosts a program that mixes politics and religion in a former cinema transformed into a radio studio, on the outskirts of Rio. He suspects Lula, if he is elected president on Sunday October 2, of wanting to legalize abortion without saying so. Last April, the leader of the left declared himself in favor before backpedaling. “It’s pure political strategy, Judge Pastor Alberto. He was afraid of losing a certain religious electorate. Politicians sleep with a Machiavelli book under their pillow.”

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The vote of evangelicals – who represent 30% of the population of Brazil – is a key issue in this election. Lula’s Workers’ Party hopes to attract part of this electorate traditionally opposed to abortion and who had overwhelmingly voted for Jair Bolsonaro during the 2019 presidential election. Brazilian law prohibits abortion, except in cases of rape, risk fatal for the mother or congenital malformation of the fetus.

The outgoing far-right president, struggling in the polls, remains a resolute opponent of abortion. In June, he had ruled inadmissible the legal abortion of an eleven-year-old girl victim of a rape. It’s going too far for Virginia, but the pro-Lula social educator is not in favor of legalization: “Here in Brazil, women have a lot of children.”

“You still have to impose restrictions. Otherwise abortion will become a fashion.”

Virginia, pro-Lula educator

at franceinfo

It has been anything but a fad or a whim for Darla. She was 19 when she got pregnant. She had to do it three times to abort and thought she was dying: “The woman I went to see in the favela was doing about fifteen clandestine abortions a week. She injected a liquid into my vagina which was very harmful. I almost lost my uterus”.

Each year, more than 150,000 women are hospitalized for complications following a clandestine abortion, 200 die from it. Viviane Azevedo, a charming 32-year-old evangelical pastor, has known three in her church.

Among evangelicals, the emergence of progressive voices like his gives him hope: “This movement is in the minority, but it has grown under Bolsonaro. Many evangelicals have left him, disappointed by his policies. Today, many of them support Lula.”

Faith can also, believes Viviane Azevedo, contribute to breaking the abortion taboo that imprisons the bodies of Brazilian women.