Rosa votes for the decriminalization of abortion up to the 12th week

The president of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), minister Rosa Weber, voted to decriminalize abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy. Weber’s vote was cast in the virtual plenary, when ministers just cast their votes in the Court’s system without discussion or transmission on TV Justiça.

More accustomed to the spotlight, minister Luís Roberto Barroso made a request for prominence after Weber’s vote, this Friday (22), and stopped the trial in the virtual plenary to take it to the physical plenary.

Weber’s decision to take the trial to the virtual plenary and avoid public opinion was harshly criticized by several jurists, politicians, journalists and pro-life entities.

Weber must leave the court on the 28th on the occasion of his retirement. Barroso will assume the presidency in place of the minister.

The ministers judge ADPF 442, authored by PSOL together with the pro-abortion NGO, Instituto Anis. The action was presented to the STF in March 2017 and requests that the articles of the Penal Code that treat intrauterine murder as a crime be considered unconstitutional.

For the authors of the action, women would have the right to allow the death of their baby in an unwanted pregnancy up to 12 weeks of gestation, regardless of the circumstances.

The proposal is pejoratively called “legal abortion”, since the change in the law, if it were a consensus in society, should occur in the Legislative Branch, and not in the Judiciary.

According to recent surveys, 70% of Brazilians are against the decriminalization of abortion.

Today, according to the Penal Code, abortion is a crime, not punished when the pregnancy is the result of rape or there is a risk to the mother’s life. In 2012, the STF defined that the abortion of anencephalic fetuses should also not be punished.