“There are many things between humans and laws”: women’s voices about criminalization of abortion

Abstract

Despite the Brazilian government to criminalize abortion as a woman’s choice, this criminalization does not mean in general an intense judicialization of cases. However, as the criminalization is not uneventful, some cases generate widespread repercussion in the police, judiciary and the media. This is what happened in 2007, when a medical clinic accused of practicing illegal abortions was closed and investigated by the police. The inquiry resulted in criminal processing about 1,200 women, who had spent through the clinic in previous years. This paper aims to describe what this process means in the lives of some of these women, interviewees at the time of research or heard through their statements given to the police. We can say preliminarily that this processing affected the lives of these women very adversely, and the significance process of the abortion itself took accusatory directions that in many cases were not present before the court case, but were reinforced by it.