WE, HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS, DEMAND YOUR SUPPORT TO THIS MANIFESTO BY EXPRESSING OUR INDIGNATION OVER THE WAY THE ISSUE ABORTION IS BEING EXPLOITED IN THE CURRENT ELECTORAL PERIOD IN BRAZIL
Abortion is a serious public health issue, and the last two Brazilian Presidents ensured significant progress in this field, with the approval of two technical norms by the Ministry of Health.
The Technical Norm on Prevention and Treatment of Diseases Resulting from Sexual Violence against Women and Adolescents, 1998, provides immediate assistance to women victims of violence who wish to terminate not only an unwanted pregnancy, but imposed by the shame of a rape. The Penal Code of 1940 allows it. The Technical Norms of Humanized Attention for Abortion in 2004 advises on the care and humane treatment that every woman in the abortion process, spontaneous or unsure, are entitled to be served in the public Health.
The Brazilian process of democratization has proved plural mature enough not to succumb to electioneering and conservative pressures that aim to merely hide and ignore the suffering of millions of women for whom abortion is a last resort. Therefore, abortion should not be paid to the cost of suffering, loneliness, illness or even death. Thus, the consolidating and deepening democracy in Brazil requires the permanent preservation of the constitutional principle of secularism of state and religious freedom as important rights for people to profess their faith and act according to their consciences.
It is widely recognized that the most affected in this context are poor women, who resort to the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS) with complications from an abortion performed under precarious conditions, with high risk of compromising their future well-being.
In the same way that an abortion under dignified and safe conditions should not be the watershed among Brazilian women because of their social class, the use of this matter in electoral processes to result in an archaic, hypocritical and conservative Brazil, over Republican interests and the promotion of gender equality, is unacceptable.
It is the duty of the State to ensure widespread access and unrestricted contraceptive methods to control fertility for men and women within the Unified Health System (SUS). The Brazilian Constitution and the Health Law 9.253/1996 establish that family planning is a right of all people and that the state provides the necessary information and means for the voluntary control of fertility.
This is no time for retreats. We can not walk in opposite of most democratic countries, which have considered this as a serious public health problem and ensured laws that preserve the dignity of women who faced such circumstances. Being against the criminalization of abortion is the same as recognizing the right to justice and prevent the suffering of millions of women in this country.
Rio de Janeiro, October 12, 2010
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