International Women's Day - 2010
A Time for Sorrow Amidst Celebrations
Photo/NEIM
This year, as we celebrate the 100th anniversary of March 8 as International Women’s Day, Brazilian feminists, along with other women in Latin America, will pay homage to the women of Chile and Haiti, whose lives have been deeply shaken, if not totally destroyed, by the recent earthquakes in our continent. In special, we are dedicating this March 8 to celebrate the lives of three feminists who have long struggled for women’s causes in Haiti and who perished with the quake. They are Miriam Merlet and Anne Marie Coriolan, who served as advisors to the Women’s Affairs Minister in Haiti, and Magalie Marcelin, well known actor and lawyer.
To our sadness for the tragic loss of these comrades is added the sorrow to some serious drawbacks we have suffered in our struggles at home. A major one is the threat to the exclusion of women’s reproductive rights, particularly the right to decide over our own bodies in terms of the termination of pregnancy, in the Third Brazilian National Plan for Human Rights. This plan was recently formulated as a result of a national conference, representing the demands and wishes of thousands of people all over the country expressed in local and regional conferences. In this Plan, women’s autonomy in relation to control over our bodies was recognised as a human right, opening the way for state support to the legalisation of abortion in Brazil. The plan also included the recognition of the right to adoption of children by same-sex couples, among other important advances in recognising sexual rights in the country. However, the Catholic Church along with other equally conservative voices have been lobbying against these advancements in our legislation, and gaining much attention in the media and government circles. President Lula himself has expressed his view against the inclusion of the legalisation of abortion as a human right – for him and others in his government this should be regarded simply as a matter of “public health”.
At the same time that women’s rights over their bodies are not being recognised in relation to legal abortions, contradictorily, the Brazilian Supreme Court just voted in favour of upholding “women’s wishes” insofar as the application of Maria da Penha Law, the new domestic violence legislation is concerned. Yet, this constitutes an immense drawback in terms of this law. Whereas the Maria da Penha Law established that full process for punishing abusive partners and other relatives independent of the victim wishing to represent against the aggressor – indeed, even neighbors and other family members of the victim could start a process going on her behalf – the Supreme Court decision now goes in favour of wife beaters in that only the victim herself can get the process going, unless she has been so badly beaten that she is unable to do so. But what of all those women who are still not aware of their rights in this regard, or who are too afraid of more beating and punishments if they take the initiative of representing against their husbands, partners, boyfriends, etc? Shouldn’t the State represent these women and bring the full course of the law upon these aggressors? We, feminists the world over, do think so. Yet, the members of the Brazilian Supreme Court – nearly all male, of course – have voted in favour of wife beaters, and of freeing the State from due responsibility in regards to women’s rights to a life free from violence!
We do invite all of you to join us in staging our protest. For the recognition of women’s reproductive rights as human rights. For the criminalisation of domestic violence against women!
Cecilia Sardenberg
5 March 2010, New York
Links:
Pathways project around the Maria da Penha Law
Getting Hotter by the Day: The Debate around the legalisation of Abortion on Demand in Brazil, Cecilia Sardenberg
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