Entities want to suspend restrictive rules on legal abortion – 04/05/2024 – Health

Health entities filed this Friday (5) a request for an injunction with the STF (Supreme Federal Court) requesting the suspension of the CFM (Federal Council of Medicine) resolution that prohibits doctors from carrying out a procedure necessary to interrupt pregnancies over 22 weeks resulting of rape.

The request for an injunction was included in an action already underway, ADPF 989 (Argument of Non-compliance with a Fundamental Precept), filed by the Center for Health Studies (Cebes), the Brazilian Society of Bioethics (SBB), the Brazilian Health Association Collective (Abrasco), by RedeUnida and by Psol (Partido Socialismo e Liberdade).

According to the document, the CFM resolution stipulated a serious restriction on legal abortion for rape victims by prohibiting fetal asystole, a procedure recommended by the WHO (World Health Organization) which consists of an injection of chemicals that interrupt the heartbeat. heart disease and is performed before removing the fetus from the uterus.

In the first 48 hours after the publication of the CFM rule, at least four girls victims of rape with pregnancies over 22 weeks were unable to have a legal abortion because doctors fear reprisals from the council, as revealed by the Sheet.

One of these cases is a 12-year-old girl who is 27 weeks pregnant. There is judicial authorization for abortion, but even so, the medical team fears retaliation from the CFM.

“We are receiving several complaints from doctors, from Amazonas to the Northeast, from girls who are arriving with more advanced pregnancies to terminate the pregnancy and the doctors don’t know what to do because they feel prohibited by the CFM”, said Rosires Pereira, president of the commission of sexual violence and termination of pregnancy provided for in the law of Febrasgo, a federation that brings together Brazilian gynecologists and obstetricians.

According to the action, the CFM’s decision contradicts WHO guidance and represents a “clear affront to both an international health consensus and an express restriction of rights established by law.”

“The WHO expressly established the procedure (fetal asystole) as the best standard in terms of evidence-based medicine and as a scientific civilizational parameter for its member states”, says an excerpt.

For health entities, the attempt to prohibit the fetal asystole procedure after 22 weeks is additional violence against raped children and women, since late access to legal abortion reflects inequity in care, disproportionately affecting children, women poor, black and rural residents.

“Health services should ensure immediate, safe and humanized care, including the provision of emergency contraception, when applicable. Failure to provide this assistance, late detection of rape of a vulnerable person or condition incompatible with extrauterine life cannot justify denial of a right”, they say.

Another argument is that the Brazilian Penal Code does not impose a time limit on legal abortion. “CFM’s attempt to distort international human rights treaties to which Brazil is a signatory is abusive, and to establish standards that contradict current legislation and health care policy. Without a legal basis, the resolution creates insecurity in professional practice and puts in assistance to vulnerable populations is at risk.”

The understanding is that the CFM resolution is an administrative act, resulting from the activity of a federal authority, and that it restricts a right established by law since 1940, “which goes against the fundamental right of strict legality provided for in the Federal Constitution, which provides that Only another law can prohibit someone from doing something or exercising their right.”

For lawyer Henderson Fürst, president of the Special Commission on Bioethics and Biolaw of the OAB (Brazilian Bar Association) and one of the authors of the actions, it is necessary to remember that Brazil is one of the most violent regions against girls and women in the world.

“When the most serious violence happens against them, and they need rights and support, they are faced with barriers. The resolution is one of the most serious barriers ever placed on those who should welcome them.”

In practice, according to him, doctors are going against international scientific consensus. “And while their hands are tied, the pregnancy of girls who are victims of rape puts their lives at risk, and they can do nothing without risking punishment, including no longer being able to be doctors.”

In an interview with journalists given by CFM this Thursday (4), gynecologist and obstetrician Raphael Câmara Parente, rapporteur of the resolution, denied that the rule is unconstitutional or that it will harm more vulnerable girls and women who do not have access to legal abortion before 10 pm weeks. “Any maternity hospital in Brazil can perform first trimester abortions,” he said.

Questioned by Sheet regarding why the CFM prohibited a procedure recommended by the WHO, Parente responded that both the organization and the Sheet have conflicts of interest regarding abortion.

“The WHO is unapologetically, like the Sheet is in favor of the decriminalization of abortion under any circumstances and at any gestational age. The WHO has a side in this story, it is in favor of allowing abortion, of killing babies at any gestational age.”

It is not true that the Sheet defend the right to abortion at any gestational age.

In the editorial Legalize soft drugs, abortion and euthanasia, published on March 23, the Sheet states: “Following what advanced democracies recommend would be beneficial for Brazil also in the case of abortion by choice. Setting a maximum period, in the initial weeks of pregnancy, in which the procedure is permitted and can be carried out in the public health system balances the woman’s right over her body and that of the unborn child”.

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