MR. JOÃO DADO (PDT-SP) pronounced the following discourse in the ordinary session of the Brazilian Congress on February 8, 2012.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen Representatitves:
The Fundamental Right in Brazil is the Right to Life. This principle is in the Constitution, it is in the infraconstitutional laws, it is in the international treaties; it is, principally, in popular opinion.
With the base of the laws, in the opinion of the voters, and in my own opinion, I have positioned myself against the Projects of Law that try to decriminalize abortion. In Brazil, such is the rejection of the society to this practice, that the Penal Code typifies it as a crime in whatever case, only disallowing its punishment when help by a doctor to save the life of the mother or to interrupt a pregnancy resulting from rape.
The Federal Constitution, in the caption for its article 5, establishes the sanctity of the right to life; in our Civil Code, already in its article 2, it establishes the juridical protection to the rights of the child, from conception. Article 7 of the Stature of the Child and of the Adolescent guarantee the right to life through the execution of public policies that allow birth. In this sense, there is also international accords, as signed in 1992, through which Brazil ratified the American Convention of Human Rights, that protects the right to life from conception.
In the case of anacephalic fetae, abortion arrived to be allowed in 2004 through the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), under the argument that fetae cannot live outside of the uterus, however, this type of abortion returned to be prohibited the same year through the STF itself, although the process to date has not been definitely judged.
The feminist movement pressured in order that the decision to abort may be considered a right of pregnant woman to a certain period of pregnancy. But the feminist theses are not popular in our Country, and never were able to reverse the illegality of the act.
In 2007, there occurred in Brasilia the 13th National Conference of Health, which rejected the proposal to legalize
Rep João Dado
abortion, with the vote of approximately 70% of the five thousand state delegates. Thus abortion remained outside the final report of the Conference, for the second time, since then the Executive also tried to approve the idea in the 12th Conference, that happened in 2003.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the last electoral debate showed that the population is against the legalization of abortion, and Madame President [Dilma Rouseff, president of Brazil] promised to not take any initiative in the vein of changing the actual legislation.
In this house, for 17 years proceded a Project of Law, that provided the extinction of the articles of the Penal Code that criminalized abortion. The Commission of the Social Security and Family rejected the project in 2008, by 33 votes against and none in favor. After this, the Project went to the Constitutional Commission, Citizenship and Justice, where it was rejected by 57 votes to 4. In 2010, the Commission of the Social Security and Family approved the Statute of Unborn, that aims to prohibit abortion in every circumstance.
In 2007, a statistical study of the Datafolha institute of research performed a search in which it was revealed that 65% of Brazilians considered that the legislation on abortion should not be altered. In 2010, in the last research on the issue, the rejection of the legalization of abortion grew: 82% of Brazilians found, as I, that the actual legislation should not be altered, and only 14% were in favor of decriminalization.
In synthesis with this opinion of the immense majority of Brazilians, I end my pronouncement with the words of the Poet Mário Quintana:
“Abortion is not, as they say, simply a killing. It is stealing…nor can their be greater theft. Because the deceased unborn child, is stolen from this world, the sky, the stars, the universe, all. Abortion is the ultimate robbery.”
Thank you very much
translated from Portuguese, this is not an official translation.