Sexual and reproductive rights under attack: the advance of political and moral conservatism in Brazil.

This article discusses political setbacks related to sexual and reproductive health and rights that have occurred in Brazil in the last 5 years (2014-2018) resulting from the significant role played by Christian (Evangelical and Catholic) parliamentarians in the legislative branch. Political initiatives aimed at prohibiting the affirmation of sexual and reproductive rights, while also curtailing debate about sexuality and gender in schools and universities, have raised "moral panic" within some elements of Brazilian society. The discursive strategies used around so-called "gender ideology" stimulated the formation of civil organisations which promote morality based on right-wing political positions. For this study, we looked at official documents and bibliographic material to examine how issues related to abortion rights, health care in cases of sexual violence, the prevention of sexually transmitted infections and homosexual citizenship are currently being suppressed, compromising the defence and advancement of the sexual and reproductive rights of women and the LGBTI+ population. The results point to the steady weakening of public policies that had become law in the 1980s, a time of Brazilian re-democratisation after two decades of military dictatorship. A wide range of civil, political and social rights, which saw significant growth and consolidation over the last 20 years, were rolled back after the resurgence of the extreme right wing in the federal legislature, culminating in the election of the current president in October 2018. However, social movements have increased in strength in the last few decades, especially the black feminist and LGBTI+ rights movements. These movements continue to provide political resistance, striving to affirm and protect all sexual and reproductive rights achieved to date.

Introduction

After more than two decades of military dictatorship, a political period called the “New Republic” (1985–present) began in Brazil. The democratic regime was established after the promulgation in 1988 of the new Brazilian Constitution, often referred to as the Citizen’s Constitution. It contains a political commitment with an uncompromising defence of social, civil and political rights. In this context, the Unified Health System (SUS) was also created under the premise of a public and universal health care system.

In the years that followed, elected presidents from social-democratic parties and the Workers’ Party were committed to the defence of human rights. Together with vigorous fortification of social movements in the country, especially the feminist and LGBTI+ movements, they secured Brazil's adherence to the international commitments signed at the United Nations (UN) conferences in the 1990s. Examples are the Vienna (1993), Cairo (1994) and Beijing (1995) conferences, all of extraordinary importance as normative frameworks to ensure the guarantee of sexual and reproductive health protection as well as the expansion of sexual and reproductive rights.[1]

Recent decades witnessed the expansion and universalisation of Brazil’s public policies for education and health. Women's health care programs were organised. Issues related to gender-based violence (domestic and sexual), obstetric and institutional abuse, and the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including AIDS, were all addressed. Services were created to perform legal abortions,[2] which in Brazil is allowed in only three situations: when the woman’s life is threatened due to the pregnancy, when the pregnancy is the result of a rape and when the foetus is anencephalic. The executive branch organised national conferences and created mechanisms to deal with homophobic and misogynist prejudices. Many initiatives were presented to the legislative and legal branches with goals to broaden the rights of LGBTI+ people through homosexual marriage rights, options for same-sex adoption and the legal right to convert one’s given name to one of the gender of choice.

Political advances to consolidate social minority rights in Brazil, including policies to protect the rights of black persons, domestic workers, poor women, indigenous people, the homeless and landless rural workers among others, have always encountered strong resistance from opposing movements rooted in the ruling classes of the country, contrary to policies promoting the redistribution of income and protection of social rights.[3] The process of political democratisation that led to the unquestionable affirmation of sexual and gender citizenship in Brazil also led to violent protests, conservative reactions and nonconformity among various social segments in the country, mainly from religious sectors and wealthier classes. One example is the universalisation of access to public tertiary education, historically occupied primarily by middle and upper-class youths who studied in private schools, where the quality of education is superior to public schools. The access of poor young people to public universities through the quota policy, which reserves spaces for black or indigenous people as well as students from public educational institutions, has always generated strong criticism from middle-class families.

In the context of expanding international political conservatism and the parallel retraction of beneficial social policies, the tone of the 2018 presidential campaign of the candidate who became the current president of Brazil put the human rights paradigm in check.[4] The discontent of a portion of the population (especially the wealthiest) with the management of the Workers’ Party, alongside digital media political campaigns that demonised the so-called left agenda, strengthened the more conservative political groups.

This national conservative reaction is closely linked to a broader international movement, with special focus on Latin America, that has unleashed a formidable campaign against what they refer to as the pernicious “gender ideology”.[5-7] This is a successful discursive rhetorical strategy engendered by reactionary religious activism to rescue traditional moral values and Christian dogmas. Unlike “gender studies” in their different critical strands, “gender ideology” does not recognise sexual and reproductive rights, or sexual and gender diversity. In fact, it reaffirms the centrality of the biological determination of sex at birth and compulsory heteronormativity. The anti-gender rhetoric seeks to nullify the critical and emancipatory potential of feminism and gender studies, promoting an ultraconservative, anti-feminist and antagonistic agenda to democracy and to human rights.[8]

If the international Catholic movement, together with other pro-life groups, laid the foundations of this conservative reaction from the Vatican, the alliance between Catholic and Protestant segments in relation to moral guidelines acquired a peculiar configuration in Brazil.[9] The current presidential discourse emphasises the defence of life and family, reinforcing the heteronormative paradigm while strongly criticising sexual and gender diversity. A palpable moral crusade has been advanced on the Brazilian public, generating prohibitions of free expression in the field of the arts, education and health.[10,11]

However, public opinion has been favourable to the achievements of civil and social rights of previously marginalised segments of the population. For example, a survey conducted in 2017 by the Ideia Big Data Institute revealed that about 65.5 per cent of the population would favour same-sex marriage; similarly, 62.4 per cent would support the adoption of children by gay couples.[12] Regarding abortion, consecutive opinion surveys show that more than half of the Brazilian population (59 per cent) accepts abortion in some circumstances.[13] It is well known that statements made, especially in opinion polls, are strongly influenced by particular contexts that circumscribe the possibility of stating one’s actual opinion. It can be assumed that results of future opinion polls will be sensitive to the resurgence of conservative moral values resulting from this strong union between state and religion.

The purpose of this article is to discuss political setbacks in the sexual and reproductive health and rights’ domain that occurred in Brazil in the last five years (2014–2018), motivated by the significant role played by the Christian (Evangelical and Catholic) parliamentarians in the legislative branch. In 2019, the “Evangelical Parliamentary Front” and the “Front in Defense of Life and Family” are represented by more than 200 members in the National Congress, including Catholic parliamentarians and sympathisers to the conservative agenda.[14,15] These policy initiatives aim to prohibit the affirmation of sexual and reproductive rights as well as curtail the debate about sexuality and gender in public schools of all levels, thereby establishing an environment of moral panic in Brazilian society[16,17] that has produced genuine backlash.[18] Anti-gender discourse has spread the belief that sexual freedom and the defence of sexual and reproductive rights would create an environment of sexual permissiveness, moral disorder and social decay.

Approach

For this article, we conducted a comprehensive review of public policies on sexual and reproductive health and rights in order to analyse the political setbacks in the sexual and reproductive health and rights’ domain in Brazil. We analysed legislative proposals in the Brazilian Congress, documentation of governmental and non-governmental organisations on sexual and reproductive rights, as well as texts published in the media about the so-called “gender ideology” in the period 2014–2018.

The monitoring of social media, feminist organisations and LGBTI+ rights advocacy groups is an integral part of the work of teachers and researchers involved with gender issues and sexual and reproductive rights. Continuous systematic monitoring of the field is part of our efforts to gather empirical material that supports our research while forming a base for further analysis and discussion. Beyond the primary sources we have compiled (dated 1988–present), we also included four strategic secondary sources to extract documents in this review because they also analyse the topics “abortion”, “gender in school” and “LGBTI+ rights”, all descriptors used to select the original documents for this paper. These four secondary sources are: a sociopolitical study by Gama[19] and political science research by Camargo,[20] both of which respectively address the legislative debates in the National Congress on the criminalisation of homophobia and the depathologisation of homosexuality and abortion. We also used a document that compiles data related to abortion debates in the Chamber of Deputies[21] and another from the public debate on gender and sexuality in the National Education Plan,[22] both with extensive documentation.

All referenced documents are in public circulation and have been accessed through the internet. They were read in full, analysed and classified according to thematic categories: the rights to abortion, health care in cases of sexual violence, the prevention of sexually transmitted infections and homosexual citizenship. The organisation of the results and the discussion in the three thematic axes illustrate the feminist and LGBTI+ agendas that are being compromised due to the intensive activities of Christian parliamentarians in the National Congress.

Backlashes on sexual and reproductive rights

Authors have pointed out the setbacks in sexual and reproductive rights in Europe, USA, Latin America, with an expansion of the public representation of religious and secular actors, renewing controversies and disputes over the regulation of sexuality, gender and corporal autonomy.[23,24] This global backlash reached Brazil in a particularly delicate moment of its political life, fuelling widespread disbelief in politics and traditional parties.[25,26] Thus an ultraconservative, salvationist worldview, that preaches a return to “traditional family values” and assumes a nationalistic rhetoric with vehement criticism of democratic and secular human rights claims, emerged with considerable force in the last parliamentary elections in the country.

Several legislative proposals in the National Congress interfere directly with specific sexual and reproductive rights that were previously affirmed during the New Republic period (1985–present). In addition, Jair Messias Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil in October 2018. Bolsonaro has a military background and is also an Evangelical parliamentarian with strong opposition to leftist ideals. Since taking office, Bolsonaro has suppressed previously valid decisions of the executive branch in favour of what he refers to as “defence of the Brazilian family”. We selected three categories to organise the discussion about these political setbacks in the Brazilian agenda for sexual and reproductive rights: women's reproductive rights; LGBTI+ rights; sex and gender education.

Women's reproductive rights

A series of legislative initiatives intend to veto the expansion of abortion rights and overturn the legalisation of free abortions in Brazil’s public health services network through the so-called Unified Health System (SUS). In Brazil, the practice of abortion is only allowed in three situations: risk to the mother's life, pregnancies caused by rape (both allowed since 1940) and cases of anencephalic foetuses (allowed since 2012). The organisation of public health services to care for victims of sexual violence and legal abortion took place in 1999 with the introduction of technical standards by the Ministry of Health’s Prevention and Treatment of Damage Resulting from Sexual Violence against Women and Adolescents.[27] Currently, there are still only 37 health services that perform legal abortions, with most of them concentrated in the capitals of twenty Brazilian states (this large country has 5570 municipalities). This structure already fails to meet the existing demand and faces further resistance from health professionals who refuse to comply with the established protocols for abortion as prescribed by law.[28,29] More recently, misoprostol, a drug used in hospitals for induction of normal birth, postpartum haemorrhage, incomplete abortion, as well as in legal abortion services, has not been available in hospital stocks, as it was not purchased in time by the Ministry of Health.[30] In Brazil, misoprostol cannot be sold in pharmacies.

Camargo[20] lists 89 bills that deal with abortion that were introduced to the National Congress between 1989 and 2016 to criminalise abortion in any situation as well as to prevent the sharing of information about the possibility of legal abortion and prevent the prescription of emergency contraception after rape (emergency contraception is considered an “abortifacient” drug by the religious groups that have introduced such bills). For example, the Senate Bill,[31] authored by Senator Pastor Valadares (Democratic Labor Party – Rondônia), proposes an amendment to the penal code to consider abortion as the interruption of intrauterine life at any stage of gestation. This initiative came in response to a decision (still temporary) taken by the Federal Supreme Court, whereby an abortion in the first three months of gestation would not be a crime. Bill 7443/2006,[32] authored by former congressman Eduardo Cunha (Brazilian Democratic Movement – Rio de Janeiro), proposes that abortion be considered a heinous crime.

Bill 478/2007,[33] known as the Statute of the Newborn, has already been denounced, in July 2017, in the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS) by the Specialized Center for the Promotion and Defense of Women's Rights, organ of the Judicial Branch of the State of São Paulo, and Feminist Network of Jurists – an NGO composed of feminist lawyers and judges.[34] This statute claims full protection for the rights of the unborn child: “The unborn enjoys the expectation of the right to life, physical integrity, honour, image and all other rights of personality” (Brasil, PL 478/2007, p.1). In addition to restricting women’s rights to abortion, the bill, which received a favourable opinion from the rapporteur (official reporter) at the Women's Rights Committee of the Chamber of Deputies in September 2018, includes restrictions to embryonic cell research and calls for payment of an allowance to women who become pregnant by rape, compelling the woman to carry pregnancy to term. Currently, the discussion of the Statute of the Newborn is still being considered in the National Congress with the advantage of already having explicit support of the new federal government.

Among the many proposed changes now proceeding through the policy process, one is particularly worrisome. It intends to change the wording of Article 5 of the Brazilian Federal Constitution to state that “everyone is equal before the law since conception”. The Proposal of Amendment to the Constitution No. 29/2015[35] was presented in 2015 by Magno Malta (Party of the Republic – Espírito Santo), a senator and Evangelical pastor with great influence throughout the current Brazilian political landscape. Most importantly, Malta has strong allegiances with the recently elected president. The document has already been signed by 27 senators and awaits designation of a rapporteur in the Commission of Constitution and Justice and Citizenship.

Legislative proposals in the National Congress that aim to ban abortions in any circumstance are contemporaneous with a procedure in the Supreme Federal Court (STF) of the Arrangement of Non-compliance with Basic Constitutional Precept (ADPF – Arguição de Descumprimento de Preceito Fundamental) n.442/2017,[36] requested by the Socialism and Freedom Party. The STF minister, rapporteur of the case, convened a public hearing in August 2018 that was attended by several civil society representatives. ADPF 442/2017 argues the nonconformity between Federal Constitution (dated from 1988) and Articles 124 and 126 of the Penal Code (dated from 1940) that established the criminalisation of voluntary abortion in Brazil. The Socialism and Freedom Party argues that the articles of the Criminal Code violate the precepts of human dignity, freedom, the right to health care and health of women, guaranteed in the current Federal Constitution.

Two Secretariats with ministry status, the Special Secretariat for Women's Policies and Special Secretariat for Human Rights, created in 2003, were abolished by the current government and replaced by the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights in January 2019. Damares Alves, a female Evangelical pastor, was appointed as Minister. In her inaugural address in January 2019, Alves declared “the state is secular, but this minister is terribly Christian, totally believing in God's plan”.[37] She had stated that “pregnancy is a problem that lasts only nine months, but abortion is a lifelong problem”.[38] The minister firmly supports two bills that are central to the current administration: the Statute of the Newborn, previously mentioned, and the Family Statute (Brasil, PL 6583/2013c) which reaffirms the conservatively perceived “natural formation” of the family, that is, the union of one man and one woman and their children, adoptive or biological. Such a formulation contradicts and excludes the existence of other possible families, such as those of same-sex couples.

Regarding the care provided to victims of sexual violence in the public health system, the aforementioned technical guidelines, updated in 2005 and again in 2011, exempted women from presenting the police report or the medical-legal examination report at the Legal Medical Institute (the institute is responsible for autopsies and cadaveric reports for the Scientific Police). According to those regulations, the only document necessary for the termination of pregnancy resulting from rape would be the woman's written consent. Meanwhile, Bill 5069/13[39] proposes modifications to the Law on Assistance to Victims of Sexual Violence[40] that would require both the police report and the medical-legal examination to prove veracity of the rape, in essence, calling into question the woman's statement. This is another initiative that seeks to remove rights already guaranteed by law to women as victims of sexual violence. It also calls into question the prophylaxis necessary to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Fortunately, no legislative change has been implemented to curtail care for victims of sexual violence, nor have there been modifications to the conditions necessary for access to legal abortion. However, resistance to accepting gender equality as a guiding principle for public policy-making is increasing rapidly every day.[41] Moreover, if the Statute of the Newborn is approved in the National Congress, even rape victims will lose the right to interrupt pregnancy.

LGBTI+ rights

Another series of policy initiatives aims to destabilise achievements in the civil and political rights of the LGBTI+ population. It advocates that homosexuals be given the option of sex-reversing treatments or sexual reorientation therapies. Contrary to international norms in the field of health that have moved towards the depathologisation of homosexuality,[42] a group of Christian psychologists in Brazil, who are connected to Evangelical parliamentarians, insist that these health treatments should be legalised.[43] This demand, referred to as the “gay cure”, has generated numerous clashes involving the Federal Council of Psychology (CFP)[44] and the National Human Rights Council, both condemning such practices, and also the Federal Supreme Court when questioned by the CFP to take a stand on the proposition.

The Brazilian context is marked by important achievements in LGBTI+ rights in the last decade. For example, in 2011, the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court (STF) recognised same-sex marriage as a legal family entity by analogous comparison to the concept of a stable union. In 2013, the National Justice Council (CNJ) passed a resolution in the country requiring all notaries to certify same-sex marriages. However, the aforementioned Family Statute[45] is closely aligned with the proposal to oppose homosexual marriage. Such a bill is certainly a reaction to the recent civil rights achievements of LGBTI+ people in courts of law.

Since January 2019, there have been numerous initiatives that directly affect the LGBTI+ population. One of the first acts of the current president was the publication of a document[46] that excludes the LGBTI+ population from the list of policies aimed at the promotion of Human Rights. This same document also excludes LGBTI+ community rights and related policies from the National Council for Combating Discrimination (CNCD). Another federal government decision abolished the Secretariat for Continuing Education, Literacy, Diversity, and Inclusion (SECADI) that had been operating under the Ministry of Education, since 2011. This Secretariat was previously responsible for initiatives related to training and preparing teachers to include themes of sexual diversity, gender and ethnicity in content delivered in classrooms in the public school system throughout the country.

The Brazilian re-democratisation process, the strengthening of social movements and the construction of the Unified Health System (SUS) all enabled the implementation of public policies for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS between the late 1980s and early 1990s. The National AIDS Program was created to respond to the demands arising from the spread of AIDS cases in Brazil. Response to the epidemic in the 1990s was based on public prevention policies, guided by social participation and viewed from a human rights perspective. However, since around 2010, Brazil has experienced profound setbacks and Brazil’s capacity to respond to the AIDS epidemic has diminished.

In Brazil, there has been a significant resurgence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, especially among the young generation, men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, transgender people, sex workers and prisoners.[47] Between 2010 and 2018, there was a 21 per cent increase in new cases of HIV infection.[48] An epidemic of congenital syphilis has also expanded. Both issues seem to be the tip of the iceberg in relation to the deleterious effects of dismantling important health policies such as SUS. For instance, in January 2019, the Ministry of Health prohibited the circulation of the HIV/STI care booklet for the transgender population, first published on the institution's website in mid-2018.[49] The booklet contained a set of preventative actions but was considered “offensive content to families”. This illustrates the current government’s blatant disregard for the prevention of sexually transmitted infections. The official excuse was that mistakes had been identified in the didactic material.[49] This position, which is linked directly to the advancement of conservative morality and guided by religious proposals in the legislative sphere, weakens the country’s capacity to deal successfully with the HIV/AIDS epidemic.[50]

Sexuality and gender education under attack

The initiatives described thus far align with a broader movement in Brazilian society to exclude any content related to gender and sexuality from being taught in the country's public schools and universities. There is a bill in the Chamber of Deputies[51] titled No-Party School (School without Party), which posits an education free of what they consider to be purely ideological indoctrination. In this proposal, the so-called “gender ideology” would endanger and likely destroy the “natural family” by questioning the biological determinism of men and women as well as their natural identification to male and female genders. Since the introduction of No-Party School, many bills have been proposed in the National Congress as well as the legislative houses of several states and municipalities[52] concerning the prohibition on addressing gender and sexuality issues in schools. Such proposals clearly place precedence on family values over secular school education, in utter denial of the republican character of the academic institution.[52] In December 2018, the bill was filed in the Chamber of Deputies; however, there is no doubt that it will be reinstated in the legislature by the leaders of the current government.

Carrara,[17] Miskolci[53] and Balieiro[54] help us to understand, in an historical perspective, the configuration of a “new geography of evil and sexual danger”. The groups that support the moral crusade against policies for sexual and reproductive rights have spread the image of the child under threat, the dangers that the approach to sexuality and gender content in school can pose to early childhood education and to families. The fact that sexuality is not only linked to reproduction but to the possibility of providing pleasure is not accepted by many religious groups (examples are: National Pro-Life and Pro-Family Association, National Association of Evangelical Jurists, Legislation and Life Movement, Citizenship for Life – Brazil Without Abortion, among many others). Some of these groups’ slogans express sentiments such as “Leave our children alone!” and “Do not disturb our children”. By using this alarmist strategy of spreading panic among families, they reject school as a legitimate place for learning citizenship, rights and social diversity, and claim the sexual and moral education of their children for the private space of families. The individualistic conception of sexuality, which reinforces the notion of sexual rights in western modernity, becomes a threat to the established social and religious order. It is exactly this supposed freedom of the subjects to be constituted as sexual subjects that is at stake in the debate.[7]

In this sense, the movements promoted by young women, many of them black, are innovative examples of resistance and social denunciation. They reflect the broader mobilisation on the international scene of #metoo by giving voices to reports of sexual harassment and allegations of gender violence. More recently, they unleashed a significant wave of protests against the fascist attributes of then-presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Social Party – Rio de Janeiro) through the #elenão campaign (#nothim). Many young women, black people and transgender people have entered Brazilian public universities. After gaining visibility and social/political legitimacy to speak with authority from their respective gender identities, they have established a level of awareness of rights that can hardly be erased. Now, they are at risk of being excluded from public universities, as well as of losing their social and political rights. It is also worthy of mention that their lives are potentially at risk. The murder of a councilwoman from the Socialism and Freedom Party in Rio de Janeiro, Marielle Franco, in March 2018, reported worldwide, is a clear example of the current dangerous situation for black, feminist and gay people in Brazil. The silencing of this young black woman – sociologist, councilwoman, lesbian, feminist, human rights activist and opponent of military intervention in Rio de Janeiro, who lived in Complexo da Maré, a large favela in Rio de Janeiro – illustrates the curtailment of the dissonant voices of the political establishment.

Conclusion

The issues of gender and sexuality have occupied a central place in the Brazilian democratic struggle. The television media, social networks and artistic communities frequently highlight topics related to homosexuality and feminist thinking. This growing acceptance of the difference and diversity of gender and sexuality is reflected in the gradual conquest of public recognition and rights by transgender people (depathologisation, changing of one’s given name to one of the gender of choice, equal opportunities in labour market among others).[55] However, the ideals of choice, freedom and autonomy have been confronted with the proliferation of highly restrictive and regulatory discourses on sexuality. For example, the extension of the rights of gender and sexual identities is countered by initiatives to restrict this pluralism by conservative religious sectors in the country’s legislature.[56]

The fight against gender ideology is structured in the dissemination of moral panic that attempts to affirm the decay or collapse of family, reproduction and sexuality.[6,57] This moral confrontation became explicit with the proposition of the Family Statute in the National Congress, the No-Party School and recent changes in the guidelines of national education.[22] The resurgence of conservative morality in the national and international sociopolitical context[58] has promoted the continuous suppression or dismantling of previously valid sexuality education initiatives on STI/AIDS and pregnancy prevention programs in schools.[59,60] There is no doubt that the effects of this conservative morality and the roll backs of various public policies will be witnessed in both education and health indicators in the coming years. Moreover, there is no doubt we are living in an historical time in which there is still much to be understood in the field of values, customs and morality. We are clearly divided about the advances in the secularisation of the state and the secularisation of culture. Issues relating to the sexual and reproductive rights of women and the LGBTI+ population have been central to multiple facets of this global backlash.