Unsafe abortion: a patriarchal and racialized picture of women’s poverty

Abstract

This article aims to analyze how the reality of criminalized abortion reinforces inequalities of gender, race/ethnicity, and class, which are co-produced within the context of sexage, understood here as the appropriation of women by men, reducing them to the status of thing. The bibliographic and documentary research was carried out, from the perspective of materialistic, historical and dialectical analysis. The main conclusion is that criminalization reinforces the logic of social inequalities in Brazil and the world. This is because poor and black women are the most affected, those who die the most, and because almost all unsafe abortions in the world occur in the peripheric economies. Thus, the consequences of criminalized abortion, whether moral, health or economic, mainly impact poor, black, young women living in peripheral economies.

Legal Pregnancy Interruption due to Sexual Violence in a Public Hospital in the South of Brazil

“…11,12 Linked to this, the problem of abortions considered to be unsafe, when they are not performed in a medical appropriate environment or by a suitable professional, must be recognized. 13 According to the World Health Organization (WHO), $ 45% of abortions in the world are performed unsafely. 14 In Brazil, abortion complications are the fourth cause of maternal mortality.…”

Violence, Structural Racism, and Their Relation to Health Outcomes of Black Brazilian Youth

“…F. Goes, 2020). Maternal deaths due to unsafe abortion are also disproportionately affecting black and indigenous young women, with risks three times higher for these groups than for whites and showing almost no reduction in the past decade (Cisne et al, 2018;Martins, 2006). Romio (2019) discusses as femicides, violent deaths of women as a consequence of the social and economic exploitation of their work and their bodies, can be classified in three main categories: reproductive femicide, deaths related to the political aspects of control of women's bodies and sexuality, for which the ultimate expression is abortion-related deaths; domestic femicide, related to physical violence within domestic relationships with partners or other family members; and sexual femicide, related to lethal violence against women by sexual activities.…”

Desafios e oportunidades para o acesso ao aborto legal e seguro na América Latina a partir dos cenários do Brasil, da Argentina e do Uruguai

“…The main victims of clandestine abortion are women with the greatest social vulnerability, affected by limited coverage of services, low quality of care, and more exposure to institutional racism and sexism 12 .…”