Abortion, the Brazilian Supreme Court and the National Conference of Brazil’s Bishops

In these times of troubled seas, there is no respite, no possibility of hiding from conflicts, of not falling into the abyss of accusations and divisions, especially when confronted with certain problems that life insists on presenting to us. Dialogue, mutual understanding, real solidarity and love for our neighbour are at risk of becoming empty words, especially in the mouths of those who consider themselves to be their representatives.

Forgive me, readers, for insisting on the same theme I addressed weeks ago.[1] New chapters of this old story have taken place, new divisions have arisen even within the CNBB (National Conference of Brazil’s Bishops). Disagreements and different opinions have manifested themselves, showing the complexity and fractures of so-called institutional unity. In addition, the public outcry from women’s organisations across the country that “children are not mothers and rapists are not fathers” resonates within us, inviting us to reflect from the depths of our entrails.

Bishops and magistrates, women’s innards ache when I remember Leonor, a 16-year-old drug addict who got pregnant on the streets. They didn’t allow her to terminate the pregnancy in time and, when she was due to deliver, they took her to a maternity hospital and then stole her newborn baby for adoption without allowing her to see her newborn. Three years have passed and she’s scouring the city, police stations and hospitals to find out where her child is and how she can get it back. Her pain is the size of her world!

Then I think of Mocinha, 13, raped by her stepfather and not allowed to legally terminate her pregnancy… She died with her baby. I also remember Anita, five children, unemployed, who in a night of adventure became pregnant with her sixth child… She managed to terminate the pregnancy and, suffering from uncontrolled haemorrhaging, was taken to hospital and mistreated by the medical staff, accused of being a murderer. Oh yes, I can still recall Angelica, the daughter of an eminent lawyer, who got pregnant by accident, but everything was solved quietly because her father and mother arranged a first-class clinic, and nothing was ever heard of the incident.

Who are the ‘murderers’ in our crazy, perverse world? Who are those who attack life by destroying entire peoples in search of cheap and easy profits?[2] What responsibility do religions and churches have for these premeditated deaths due to mineral exploitation?[3] Yet the socially well-off only claim to be the defenders of life when it comes to poor women and girls, defenceless victims of human stupidity who have been driven into unbearable situations.

The gentlemen and ladies who browse through the Bible and law books do not realise the pain experienced by others, they do not dwell directly with the pain on the pavements and on the outskirts, they do not perceive life embodied in a woman’s body. They only flick through papers, give blessings but don’t sustain the bloodied bodies, nor touch them, nor hold them in their arms, nor smell their scent, their tears and wails. What really drives them to act in such a cold and legalistic way?

They want to regulate women’s bodies in the name of the good that they believe is best for human life.[4] They want to obey written texts, words of order, whether they are declared divine or from the legal or ecclesiastical magisterium. However, the question is, what is good? In fact, it is what the gentlemen consider to be good and not what we women consider to be good amidst certain difficulties and limitations in life. Who has the reason? Is it your cold reason or our wounded bodies?

Wouldn’t it be better to get out of this dualistic dispute that leads nowhere? Wouldn’t it be better to get out of these utterly irrelevant arguments about when life begins? Life! What is life?

We only get to know good by groping, that is, we get to know it by judging that we know it or just by trying to do what seems best to us when pain, aggression and infamy are inflicted on our bodies. In this vein, the honourable gentlemen have once again slipped into an occasional legalism or juridicism. Employing ideas on the hard reality of bodies, especially those of women, using arguments and legal permissions that are not widely known to the public in order to win disputes over painful realities seems to deserve criticism because they are far removed from what is felt, from what is lived in the daily lives of many women and men.

The newspapers have reported that the CNBB (National Conference of Brazil’s Bishops) has asked the Brazilian Supreme Court to annul the vote of Justice Rosa Weber, cast in 2023 before her retirement. Her vote was in favour of abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy, since she wanted to alleviate the situation of thousands of women, girls, teenagers and young women in their fertile years in our country who are assaulted by irresponsible and violent men.

Unfortunately, the official body of the National Conference of Brazil’s Bishops (CNBB) seems to be unaware of the tragic situation and has moved behind the scenes of the Republic’s judicial powers to annul the Justice’s vote through a competent case law that favours elitist groups in the country who have an open political struggle against women’s rights and emancipation from the patriarchal yoke. It has forgotten its proper place and its social function of welcome and mercy. Its fixation on controlling women’s bodies is a derangement of its old religious cultural world, as if our bodies were the last bastion of maintaining its domination and the divine will of a god in its image and likeness.

It astonishes me how little critical analysis these eminent gentlemen have of the complex human reality. They talk about reality, but they move in abstract ideas and in the inconsistency of their religious theories when facing the reality of the destruction of our bodies. I am amazed at how they do not allow a sacred doubt to undermine their convictions and their patriarchal visions of the world.

Although we know that they are not fond of feminist theories of gender, it is not easy to admit that they do not realise that their patriarchal hierarchical way of life values and legitimises domination and control over people. Furthermore, the Christian religion, in their preaching of God’s will and obedience to it, developed the valorisation of male hierarchies to the detriment of women,[5] provoked the ‘holy’ wars that are not just from the past, but expand into the present in the attitudes that the gentlemen have maintained towards women and those marginalised by difference. It is sufficient to note this attempt to interfere improperly in the votes and decisions of the Supreme Court, which you gentlemen claim to be constitutional. As ‘amicus curiae’, you use this legal device to continue your tireless misogyny, sometimes disguised as valuing life in general and especially the lives of women according to the model that your tradition imposes on them.

Unfortunately, power in the institutional Catholic world and in other spaces is sustained by the fear of women’s bodies, justified by a masculine abstraction of God, confirmed by a personalist Christological dogmatism that excludes women from real representation.[6] They fear that Eve’s many bodies could threaten their unstable security.

It is no longer a question of convening new councils to make global decisions and fewer national assemblies to declare their option for the poor. It is about taking to the streets, without robes or titles, to approach the children who have been raped, the mothers who cry of hunger and homelessness, the lack of medical care in a nation that produces material and spiritual misery for thousands of its members despite the efforts of many.

Furthermore, the interference of these gentlemen in the Supreme Court seems misplaced and even disrespectful of a woman of the quality of Justice Rosa Weber. How dare you ask for her vote to be cancelled? Which jurists are encouraging them to do so by inventing all sorts of arguments to make their point, which hide their true intentions?

The gentlemen seem to value their ideas more in order to control the lives of those who think differently, to deny them the right to be artisans of the laws that govern their bodies, especially when it comes to women’s bodies.

I hope that the Supreme Court does not accept a request as disrespectful of the current moment as the one made by the gentlemen. No doubt they will once again argue that they are defending life. However, this defence of life is just an artifice of thought, it doesn’t touch the reality of the lives that have actually been violated, it doesn’t touch the wounds of the girls exposed to death in a population that lacks so many needs.

One cannot choose the ideal good according to the preaching of the gentlemen. In reality, any choice includes its opposite.

That’s why we’re treading water, trying to make sure that our steps don’t let us fall and that we don’t slip on the stones they’re throwing at us.

When will they be willing to break away from their hierarchical conceptions? When will they stop identifying the Gospel with their perfect laws, their crosiers and mitres, their preaching to an idealised world? When will they stop seeing themselves as the conductors of the truth? When will they stop identifying their actions with those of Jesus through their static interpretations that are often permeated with the desire for power and recognition?

It is devastating to see some of the CNBB’s current policies so focussed on accusing women’s bodies and prohibiting them. It’s unfortunate to see religions at the service of the most reactionary and exclusionary policies!

Once again, what drives their actions? What moves their hearts? You, gentlemen, are just a handful of celibate men in the face of an immense number of women who are demonstrating all over the country, the continent and the world, demanding respect for their bodies and their rights. Why don’t you listen to them? Why do their cries have no effect on you? Why do you fear us?

In truth, you seem to fear us. Fearful little boys who need their legal weapons or their religious fantasies to assert themselves as superiors and stifle any demonstration contrary to their power established in the name of their god… Which masters do you obey?

Unwittingly or willingly, many of you gentlemen ally yourselves with the powerful and continue plotting to have us stoned, crucified, silenced and killed. You don’t know what you’re doing… Or do you?

In the dead of night you hand women over to their tormentors, seek out witnesses against them and don’t hesitate to shout: ‘crucify them, crucify them’!

But in spite of you, now is another day…

We announce our resurrection with the resurrected. We are part of those who are not afraid to go to the tombs, to enter, to smell the pain, to be dismayed, to cry and to leave, organising ourselves ever more so that the life that inhabits us is respected and loved. Behold: we are resurrecting… We move the stone… The darkness begins to dissipate…

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Article originally published in Portuguese at Instituto Humanitas – UNISINOS (A questão do aborto, o STF e a CNBB. Artigo de Ivone Gebara – Instituto Humanitas Unisinos – IHU), and translated to English by Patricia Palazzo Tsai, with the authorisation and blessings from the author.

[1] Article published in Portuguese regarding a controversial law project in Brazil that tries to ban abortion rights to raped women and children. The article can be read here: https://www.ihu.unisinos.br/640474-comentarios-de-uma-velha-professora-sugeridos-pela-nota-da-cnbb-a-respeito-da-pl-1904-2024-artigo-de-ivone-gebara.  

[2] Reference to an article published in Portuguese on the genocide perpetrated by the agribusiness sector against indigenous peoples. It can be read here: https://www.ihu.unisinos.br/categorias/641124-raposa-serra-do-sol-sob-ataque-o-agro-se-lanca-contra-os-povos-indigenas-artigo-de-gabriel-vilardi.

[3] Reference to an article published in Portuguese on the genocide of the Yanomami due to mineral exploitation. It can be read here: https://www.ihu.unisinos.br/categorias/636950-garimpo-e-barbarie-uma-historia-de-genocidio-e-de-luta-dos-yanomami-artigo-de-gabriel-vilardi.

[4] Reference to an article published in Portuguese mentioning that repression on women’s bodies resulted in one rape each 46 minutes in Brazil. It can be read here: https://www.ihu.unisinos.br/640626.

[5] Reference of an article published in Portuguese regarding the sexism that corrodes the Catholic Church. It can be read here: https://www.ihu.unisinos.br/categorias/639321-ciclo-de-estudos-no-ihu-o-nao-lugar-das-mulheres-o-desafio-de-desmasculinizar-a-igreja-artigo-de-gabriel-vilardi.

[6] Reference to an article published in Portuguese regarding the male-centric hegemony and lack of women (and more importantly, black women) from theology courses. It can be read here: https://www.ihu.unisinos.br/categorias/638157-o-chamado-para-desmasculinizar-a-igreja-por-que-a-hierarquia-tem-medo-de-professoras-negras-nas-faculdades-de-teologia-artigo-de-gabriel-vilardi.

© Ivone Gebara, 2024.

This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Cover Image: Provided by the author. Brazilian Supreme Court, by Cayeme. Photo licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0.