Abortion, Brazil, and Benedict

New York Times
May 9, 2007

As Pope Heads to Brazil, Abortion Debate Heats Up
By LARRY ROHTER

SÃO PAULO, Brazil, May 9 — Hours before Pope Benedict XVI was scheduled to arrive here on his first pastoral trip to Latin America, a heated dispute broke out today between the Roman Catholic Church and the Brazilian government about abortion policy.

Church officials have said that the pope will reaffirm the Vatican’s traditional stand on the issue in public pronouncements during his five-day visit here. But the cordial atmosphere that had been expected to prevail now appears to be threatened by sharp exchanges between senior Brazilian government officials and their counterparts in the church.

The controversy began on Monday, when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil, said in a radio interview with Roman Catholic radio stations that he was of two minds on abortion. Though personally opposed, he said, as president he believes that “the state cannot abdicate from caring for this as a public health question, because to do so would lead to the death of many young women in this country.”

Except in very limited and specific circumstances, abortion is against the law in Brazil, which is the most populous Roman Catholic nation in the world with an estimated 140 million church members. Even so, abortions are not uncommon: clandestine clinics known in Brazilian slang as “angel factories” perform an estimated one to two million abortions a year.

But the Minister of Health, José Gomes Temporão, suggested in March that a change in the law, which now imposes prison sentences of up to three years for women convicted of having an illegal abortion, might be appropriate. He called for a national referendum on abortion, prompting denunciations from pulpits across the country and a protest march on Tuesday in Brasilia, the capital.

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