The Battle Over Abortion Rights in Brazil's State Arenas, 1995-2006

This article proposes a relational approach to the study of abortion law reform in Brazil. It focuses on the interaction of pro-choice and anti-abortion movements in different state arenas and political contexts. It details the emergence of a strategic action field on abortion during the Brazilian re-democratization process and the National Constituent Assembly. We offer analysis on pro-choice and anti-abortion mobilization in state arenas-mainly in the executive and legislative powers-during the two terms of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC), 1995-1998 and 1999-2002, and the first term of President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula), 2003-2006. We then map political resources for mobilization, such as legislative bills, public policy norms, and judicial decisions, and track legal continuities and changes. Finally, we analyze anti-abortion reaction, which was consolidated through an increased conservative presence in congress after 2006, and discuss how the abortion debate has migrated from congress to the Supreme Court and the public sphere.Research Council of NorwayGetulio Vargas Fdn, Sch Law, Rio De Janeiro, BrazilBrazilian Ctr Anal & Planning CEBRAP, Sao Paulo, BrazilUniv Fed Sao Paulo, Sociol, Sao Paulo, BrazilUniv Fed Sao Paulo, Sociol, Sao Paulo, BrazilResearch Council of NorwayWeb of Scienc

Constitutionalizing abortion in Brazil

Brazil has been constitutionalizing disputes on women’s right to terminate unwanted pregnancy. This paper explains how this process started with the drafting of the new constitution in 1986-87, and evolved in different arenas, the legislative, the executive and in the public sphere. Most recently, it moved to the Supreme Court, primarily in its anencephalic pregnancy decision, brought as a Claim of Non Compliance with Fundamental Precept (ADPF 54). Decided in 2012, it was the first time since the adoption of the Penal Code in 1940 that the Brazilian Supreme Court moved the criminal boundaries to enable women to decide whether to terminate anencephalic pregnancies. The purpose of this article is to examine how the ADPF 54 decision contributed to the constitutionalization of abortion.  First, it established the right to life as a non-absolute right, granting constitutional legitimacy to the system of legal exceptions. Second, it signaled the balancing of constitutional rights as the reasoning paradigm for this issue. Third, in framing the controversy as a matter of balancing constitutionally protected rights, the positions established in the Court ultimately recognized crucial understandings of women’s rights

Anti-racism legislation in Brazil: the role of the Courts in the reproduction of the myth of racial democracy

The goal of this paper is to analyze Brazilian anti-racism law in practice, assessing judicial response to cases of racial stigma and insult. We analyzed over 200 cases from 9 Brazilian states involving racial insults and racial disparagement in Brazilian courts of appeal. We find that the judiciary tends to downplay the importance of insult and stigma, often dismissing cases or lowering penalties. This judicial treatment conflicts with the evidence that racial insults are prevalent in society and serve to maintain racial hierarchies. While the judiciary appears to be enforcing anti-discrimination law, the actual decisions show that the legal system fails to recognize and deal with the real dynamics of Brazilian racism thereby reinforcing the myth of Brazil racial democracy

Mobilização anti-aborto na América Latina: Sinais de um campo em transformação

Gender and sexuality have become a focal point of the political divide in Latin America. In many countries, religious actors, political leaders, pro-life and pro-family nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), among others, have come together to promote a neoconservative shift in contemporary regional politics. Despite the constant public presence of religious actors and their long-standing influence on public policies in the region, recent challenges to sexual and reproductive rights have come from a field in transformation. The anti-abortion mobilization shows important signs of adaptation and mutation on different fronts – networks, alliances, strategies, and frameworks. Finally, this process of renovation has led to the expansion of this dispute towards a broader anti-gender alliance, and the increasing importance of legal strategies and tools by anti-abortion actors is remarkable. The transformations in the anti-abortion field were globally put into action after the conservatives’ defeat in the UN Conference in Cairo, and they also interacted with different local processes, in response to the relational dynamics between movement and countermovement. However, we can see important convergences among Latin-American cases. Drawing on evidence from case studies of countries in the region, this article analyses the main characteristics of contemporary anti-abortion activism in Latin America. It identifies significant commonalities among the cases and raises the hypotheses that shifts in the composition of the anti-abortion networks, in mobilization strategies and frames are inserted in a trend that has been transnationally diffused and subject to different processes of vernacularization. This article ultimately calls attention to the need for more empirical research to address the regional dynamics of transnational actors, diffusion processes, and local adaptations.Gênero e sexualidade tornaram-se um foco de polarização política na América Latina. Em muitos países, atores religiosos, líderes políticos e organizações não governamentais (ONGs) “pró-vida” e “pró-família”, entre outros, uniram-se para promover uma mudança neoconservadora na política regional contemporânea. Apesar da constante presença pública de atores religiosos e de sua influência de longa data nas políticas públicas da região, os ataques recentes aos direitos sexuais e reprodutivos vêm de um campo em transformação. A mobilização antiaborto mostra importantes sinais de adaptações e mutações em diferentes frentes – em redes, alianças, estratégias e enquadramentos. Finalmente, esse processo de renovação levou à expansão do próprio campo de disputa para um campo ampliado da aliança antigênero, sendo digna de nota a importância crescente de estratégias e ferramentas legais para atores antiaborto. As transformações no campo do antiaborto foram colocadas em marcha globalmente com a derrota dos conservadores na Conferência da Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU) no Cairo e interagiram com diferentes processos locais, respondendo às dinâmicas relacionais entre movimento e contramovimento. De qualquer modo, observamos convergências importantes entre os casos latino-americanos. A partir de evidências de alguns estudos de caso de países na região, este artigo analisa as principais características do ativismo antiaborto na área e identifica os pontos comuns entre os casos, levantando a hipótese de que as mudanças atuais na composição das redes antiaborto, suas estratégias de mobilização e enquadramentos indicam uma tendência difundida transnacionalmente, embora sujeita a diferentes processos de vernacularização. O texto, em última instância, chama a atenção para a necessidade de mais pesquisa empírica para acessar as dinâmicas regionais de atores transnacionais, processos de difusão e adaptações locais.Fil: Rodriguez de Assis Machado, Marta. Fundação Getulio Vargas; BrasilFil: Peñas Defago, Maria Angélica. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Centro de Investigaciones Jurídicas y Sociales. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Centro de Investigaciones Jurídicas y Sociales; ArgentinaFil: Gianella, Camila. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Perú; Per

The State against victims’ families? The Carandiru Massacre and the limits of judicial reparation in case of serious human rights violations

This paper aims to present a general picture of the judicial decisions regarding the compensation of the families of the inmates killed during the Carandiru Massacre (a police intervention in an overcrowded jail in the city of São Paulo in 1992). The data was gathered using three strategies: (i) engine searches at the official websites of the State of São Paulo Justice Court (TJSP for its Portuguese initials) and São Paulo Lawyers Association (AASP); (ii) the execution of a technical cooperation term with the Public Defender Office of São Paulo, aiming the access of judicial procedures initiated by them; and (iii) verification of judicial payment orders made available by the TJSP. As a result, it is pointed out that out of the 73 actions identified in this research, 43 were deemed valid by the Judiciary and had the compensation available to family members. Furthermore, the framework obtained by the research is articulated with examples of other models of compensation for family members in cases of serious human rights violations – especially within the Inter-American Human Rights System – on the broader scope of the meaning of reparation to victims of violations. As a conclusion, the absence of a policy of reparation for victims of human rights violations by the Brazilian State is pointed out, which is contrary to the trend seen in the international normative framework, that points to an expansion of the rights of victims and the meanings of reparation.O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar um quadro geral das ações de indenização propostas pelos familiares das vítimas do Massacre do Carandiru e discutir as implicações e limitações deste modelo de reparação em casos de graves violações de direitos humanos. A obtenção do material empírico se deu a partir de três estratégias: (i) buscas de ações de indenização no site do Tribunal de Justiça do Estado de São Paulo (TJSP) e no site da Associação dos Advogados de São Paulo (AASP); (ii) celebração de termo de cooperação técnica com a Defensoria Pública do Estado de São Paulo para acessar as ações que foram iniciadas pela Procuradoria de Assistência Judiciária (PAJ); e (iii) consulta de precatórios disponibilizados pelo TJSP. Como resultado, aponta-se que das 73 ações identificadas nesta pesquisa, 43 foram julgadas procedentes pelo Judiciário e tiveram a indenização disponibilizada aos familiares. Ademais, articula-se o quadro obtido pela pesquisa com exemplos de outros modelos de indenização de familiares em casos de graves violações de direitos humanos e com os parâmetros estabelecidos no campo do Direito Internacional dos Direitos Humanos – especialmente na órbita do Sistema Interamericano de Direitos Humanos – sobre a abrangência do significado da reparação às vítimas. Como conclusão, aponta-se a ausência de uma política de reparação de vítimas de violações de direitos humanos pelo Estado brasileiro, na contramão da tendência do quadro normativo internacional, que aponta para uma ampliação dos direitos das vítimas e dos sentidos da reparação

O DEBATE PÚBLICO SOBRE A DESCRIMINALIZAÇÃO DO USO DE DROGAS NO BRASIL: ESFERA PÚBLICA EM JOGO, DEMOCRACIA EM DISPUTA E A ATUAÇÃO DO SISTEMA DE JUSTIÇA

As diretrizes gerais da política de drogas brasileira são traçadas pela Lei nº 11.343/2006, que institui o Sistema Nacional de Políticas Públicas sobre Drogas (Sisnad). A estrutura do modelo de controle brasileiro conta com a criminalização do consumo, da produção e da comercialização de drogas. Muito embora a lei preveja um tratamento penal ao usuário mais brando, sem previsão de pena de prisão, ele persiste sob a jurisdição penal do Estado. De outro lado, as condutas relacionadas à produção, distribuição e comercialização de drogas são puníveis com penas que variam entre cinco a quinze anos de prisão. Recentemente as discussões sobre a reformulação da política de drogas brasileira foram marcadas por episódios de censura. Fez-se necessária a intervenção do Judiciário para garantir a liberdade de expressão e o debate público sobre a questão. Além disso, o Judiciário também foi chamado a decidir sobre a constitucionalidade de um dos pilares essenciais do modelo, a criminalização do consumo de drogas. O STF ainda está por analisar essa questão, que pode mudar substancialmente a política brasileira de drogas. Este artigo levanta algumas questões sobre a consolidação da democracia brasileira e o papel do Judiciário, a partir das discussões sobre a reforma da política de drogas

Energy Estimation of Cosmic Rays with the Engineering Radio Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger Observatory and is used to detect the radio emission of cosmic-ray air showers. These observations are compared to the data of the surface detector stations of the Observatory, which provide well-calibrated information on the cosmic-ray energies and arrival directions. The response of the radio stations in the 30 to 80 MHz regime has been thoroughly calibrated to enable the reconstruction of the incoming electric field. For the latter, the energy deposit per area is determined from the radio pulses at each observer position and is interpolated using a two-dimensional function that takes into account signal asymmetries due to interference between the geomagnetic and charge-excess emission components. The spatial integral over the signal distribution gives a direct measurement of the energy transferred from the primary cosmic ray into radio emission in the AERA frequency range. We measure 15.8 MeV of radiation energy for a 1 EeV air shower arriving perpendicularly to the geomagnetic field. This radiation energy -- corrected for geometrical effects -- is used as a cosmic-ray energy estimator. Performing an absolute energy calibration against the surface-detector information, we observe that this radio-energy estimator scales quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy as expected for coherent emission. We find an energy resolution of the radio reconstruction of 22% for the data set and 17% for a high-quality subset containing only events with at least five radio stations with signal.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Measurement of the Radiation Energy in the Radio Signal of Extensive Air Showers as a Universal Estimator of Cosmic-Ray Energy

We measure the energy emitted by extensive air showers in the form of radio emission in the frequency range from 30 to 80 MHz. Exploiting the accurate energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we obtain a radiation energy of 15.8 \pm 0.7 (stat) \pm 6.7 (sys) MeV for cosmic rays with an energy of 1 EeV arriving perpendicularly to a geomagnetic field of 0.24 G, scaling quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy. A comparison with predictions from state-of-the-art first-principle calculations shows agreement with our measurement. The radiation energy provides direct access to the calorimetric energy in the electromagnetic cascade of extensive air showers. Comparison with our result thus allows the direct calibration of any cosmic-ray radio detector against the well-established energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DOI. Supplemental material in the ancillary file