Pro-choice activists say blocking a resolution in Congress could spread misinformation about access to legal abortion
This story was produced under the Feminist Journalist Fellowship. It is part of a series highlighting the work of our fellows, developed in collaboration with Global Voices and Noor.
In a video posted by Chris Tonietto in early November 2025 on Instagram, the right-wing member of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies celebrated a vote that put a brake on a resolution that she claimed “facilitated abortion up to nine months of pregnancy for underage girls who are victims of violence, without the knowledge or consent of their parents.”
The resolution in question was published by the National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents (Conanda), part of the Ministry of Human Rights, following a court decision in January, 2025. It did not modify any existing legislation, only establishing protocols for health professionals to follow in order to ensure minors’ access to legal abortion, a right already guaranteed under Article 128 of the Brazilian penal code.
As the author of the legislative decree proposal against the resolution, Tonietto shared in the caption of her video that blocking it would “protect life” and “defend Brazilian democracy.”
“We just prevented the civilizational setback that was being promoted by [it],” she told her followers after the potential block was approved.
Despite the celebration from right-wing politicians, the proposal still needs to pass through the Senate to make the suspension effective — the majority of the house is now right and centre-right. A mixed parliamentary front “against abortion and pro-life” was created, gathering 172 deputies and 10 senators in 2023, with Tonietto as its coordinator.
In response to Global Voices over email, Tonietto said her proposal was a “legitimate legal criticism of an infralegal act that exceeds its jurisdiction.”
According to the Chamber’s website, among other points, the proposal referred to the resolution not requiring a police report as mandatory for underage girls seeking to terminate a pregnancy believed to be a result of sexual violence. In Brazil, 14 years is the legal age for consent, meaning girls under this age have a legal right to interrupt a pregnancy. However, barriers such as stigma, lack of information, limited services, and inadequate training of health professionals often hinder access to safe abortion.
Conanda’s resolution was a response to the high rates of pregnancy among girls under 14 years old and the low uptake of legal abortion, says Conanda president Deila Martins. Almost 14,000 girls aged 10 to 14 got pregnant in 2023, but only 154 had access to a legal abortion — 1.1 per cent, reports Agência Brasil.
The politicians opposing the document also criticized the proposed protocol for situations where the victim and their legal guardian disagree on whether to terminate a pregnancy. Arguing that the resolution establishes “a decision mechanism that is not supported by Brazilian law,” Tonietto told Global Voices that the resolution “substitutes the general rule of family autonomy.”
But Martins defends the protocol that seeks to protect the autonomy of the pregnant minors who are victims of sexual assault. “Most of the time, over 60 per cent of abusers, and in some territories, almost 80 per cent, are part of the victim’s family,” Martins told Global Voices, citing fathers, mothers, uncles, and stepfathers as offenders and enablers. “Parental consent cannot be demanded because it revictimizes the victim, and often impedes that child from getting access to her right to abortion.”
Tonietto did not respond to a question about the predominance of familial abusers and revictimization in a document sent to Global Voices.
This is the latest example of the Brazilian far-right using abortion to leverage their agenda. Using democratic tools, such as bills of law and legislative blocks, as platforms, right-wing politicians in the last decade have advocated for fetal personhood, spread misinformation about a non-recognized medical condition called “post-abortion syndrome,” and threatened sexual violence victims seeking abortion rights with criminalization.
How misinformation mobilizes the electorate
During a protest in Rio de Janeiro, women displayed pictures of politicians who voted to block Conanda’s resolution. Photo by Nicole Froio, used with permission.
Although the history of attacks on legal abortion in Brazil is extensive, the current wave can be traced back at least to 2007, when federal deputies proposed a law that would amend the Brazilian penal code to classify abortion as a heinous crime, banning it in all cases, as well as prohibiting the freezing, disposal, and trade of human embryos.
The law did not pass, but it became a blueprint for anti-choice legislation as well as political moves that seek to curtail legal abortion rights. Currently, Brazilian law authorises abortion in three cases: when the pregnancy is a result of rape, when it presents a risk to the woman’s life and in cases of anencephaly.
During the far-right government of President Jair Bolsonaro, federal public servants were suspected of attempting to prevent a 10-year-old girl from accessing abortion services, while Conanda experienced a decline in its members and faced attempts to hinder meetings. “He cut the funding for in-person meetings [during the pandemic],” Martins recalls.
Despite the election of a left-leaning government in 2022, with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the attacks against constitutionally protected rights to abortion have continued.
The false narrative that Lula was pro-abortion was exploited by his opponents to sway Christian voters, becoming a key issue during the campaign. Months before the election, however, he supported abortion as a public health matter. Meanwhile, evangelical leader Silas Malafaia called him “stupid and dumb,” defending fetal personhood on his YouTube channel. In an attempt to appease the evangelical camp a few weeks before the election, Lula published an open letter pledging not to expand abortion rights.
According to a report published in 2024 by the news organization AzMinas, bills of law seeking to restrict legal abortion rights in Brazil have been growing at the municipal, state, and federal levels. In a 2025 report, they point out that from 2017 to 2024, 103 such bills were introduced across the country.
“These bills often create legal uncertainty for healthcare professionals, interfering with their work and increasing the stigma surrounding legal abortion,” AzMinas feminist journalist Maria Paula Monteiro wrote at the time. “It is an attack to weaken reproductive rights.”
According to a May 2025 report by NetLab, a research laboratory at the School of Communication at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, abortion has been a central issue in the intensification of political polarization in Brazil. The report reveals that it was used in “disinformation campaigns and as a motive for attacks on institutional, legislative, and public opinion” in 2024, a year that saw municipal elections in the country. The report highlights WhatsApp messages that said abortion and its advocates were directly connected to the devil. “Abortion is understood as a symbol of a spiritual and political battle, in which Christian values are at risk,” it concludes.
According to Brazilian legislation, city legislators and mayors do not have the power to legislate on abortion rights, and yet, morally condemning it helps candidates to gain votes.
The text submitted by Tonietto claims that the Conanda protocols force “an almost compulsory submission to the abortion procedure,” and inverts current medical conclusions about the health risks of early pregnancy, claiming that abortion “may pose a serious risk to the life of the pregnant woman who, under current legislation, is not able to make her own decisions.”
Although Tonietto uses the word “woman” in her proposal, the Conanda resolution concerns pregnant girls. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), adolescent mothers aged 10 to 19 face higher risks of eclampsia, puerperal endometritis and systemic infections than women aged 20 to 24. Additionally, WHO warns that babies of adolescent mothers face higher risks of low birth weight, preterm birth and severe neonatal conditions.
For Conanda’s president, this move could lead to a lack of protection for child victims of sexual violence, favoring abusers and pedophiles. “It seeks to continue the tradition of silence and invisibility around this problem,” she says.
Effects on Ground
Protesters hold a sign saying, ‘Evangelicals defending girls and women’s lives: A child is not a mother.’ Photo by Nicole Froio, used with permission
Advocates fear the chaos created by supporters of the suspension will lead to even fewer girls seeking the services they need. “We are already getting messages from health professionals and other partners who think legal abortion for minors has been forbidden,” Laura Molinari, executive director of Nem Presa Nem Morta, a campaign to advocate for decriminalization of legal and safe abortion, told Global Voices.
This is the kind of access barrier the Conanda resolution sought to address: misinformation. Molinari notes that spreading misinformation through political action is a common tactic used by the right-wing. “The confusion itself is beneficial for them.”
Abortion access for statutory rape victims in Brazil is precarious, with a low number of health staff able to provide the service, as well as a lack of unified guidelines on how to serve these victims. Only 4 per cent of Brazilian municipalities have facilities to provide legal abortion services, according to data submitted by O’Neill Institute to the Supreme Court — 88 public clinics across 55 cities — a significant geographical barrier for the majority of the population.
In 2024, when a bill proposal sought to amend the Penal Code to equate abortion with murder if performed after the 22nd week of pregnancy, obstetrician nurse Lígia Maria, who provides abortion services at a public hospital in Brasília, noticed a significant number of patients asking whether they would be criminally liable for the procedure.
Maria’s hospital had also previously been a target of harassment and threats for providing these services. “Now, we are concerned about patients not seeking abortion services at all because of this misinformation,” Maria said. “We worry that they’re not even coming to us with questions.”
The move to block the resolution, last year, sparked protests in different regions of the country. Protesters called politicians in favor of it “pedophiles” and “enemies of children,” reframing the effects of the block as detrimental to children’s rights.
Lígia Maria, however, believes that the reaction might mask the real ineffectiveness of the attempted blockade. She also emphasises that it should be seen as a call to recognise Conanda’s role in defending children’s rights, rather than a victory for conservatives. “It feels like we are giving ammunition to the far right when we confirm their claim to victory,” she said.
About the author
Nicole Froio (Brazil) is a Brazilian-Colombian journalist and feminist cultural critic based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her work has been featured in international outlets including The Guardian, Xtra Magazine, The Verge, Bitch Media, Prism Reports, Dame Magazine, and Yes! Magazine, among others. She writes on the intersections of gender, politics, and culture, with particular focus on the weaponization of womanhood by far-right parties, trans moral panics, and abortion misinformation. Froio is the co-founder of The Flytrap, a feminist, worker-owned, and non-hierarchical newsletter.