BRASILIA, Brazil — Abortion is illegal in the world’s most populous Roman Catholic country, except in cases of rape or grave risk to the mother.

But that situation almost changed dramatically March 7, when a coalition of pro-life organizations and the Catholic Church, through a major campaign of letters and e-mails that flooded the country’s Ministry of Health, barely foiled an attempt to legalize abortion.

In fact, according to the daily Folha de São Paulo, in response to the deluge, the Ministry of Health, was forced to issue a press release denying being involved in promoting abortion.

In the press release, the ministry blamed the “confusion” on “wrong messages going around the Internet,” without openly referring to the successful pro-life campaign.

The campaign to legalize abortion in Brazil started 10 years ago, during the run-up to the 1995 Fourth U.N. Conference in Beijing, when leading newsmagazines bombarded the public with special editions on women, including pieces on abortion and birth control.

It gained added momentum in 2000, when the Regional Campaign for the Decriminalization of Abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean (also known as the September 28th Campaign) was officially launched by pro-abortion activists.

The campaign aims to liberalize abortion laws across the predominantly Catholic region, and Brazil and Uruguay — which narrowly rejected a pro-abortion law at the Senate after passing the Congress last year — are regarded as the easiest targets.

In Brazil, the pro-abortion offensive has been spearheaded by the Coletivo Feminista (Feminist Collective) a coalition of pro-abortion and feminist organizations who count as significant allies of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government.

The coalition created the Comissão de Cidadania e Reproduçao (Commission of Reproduction and Citizenship), which has been lobbying in favor of abortion at Brazil’s national Congress and executive branch.

The commission is behind most of the nine bills currently under congressional review that will determine if abortion becomes legal, and under which terms if it does.

Frustrated by what is sees as the influence of Catholics and Evangelicals in Lula’s government, CCR set up a taskforce of 14 feminist organizations. It aims to lobby for support and approval of the pro-abortion bills being reviewed by the Brazilian congress’s Commission for Social and Family Security.

Hospitals Targeted

The group was also behind a 1999 “technical norm” issued by the Ministry of Health permitting, but not requiring, public hospitals to provide “emergency abortion.”

Under this norm, denounced by the Catholic Church as unconstitutional, abortions currently can be obtained in 44 Brazilian hospitals.

In practice, though, most of the personnel in such hospitals are opposed to abortion because of their Catholic beliefs.

Trying to undermine that opposition is a key goal of Catolicas pelo Direito de Decidir, the Brazilian branch of Catholics for a Free Choice. The organization was founded in 1992 by Maria Jose Rosado Nunes, a former nun who, after finishing a Ph.D. dissertation titled “The Church, Sex, and Power” at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris, left her order and married a former Jesuit priest.

CDD is currently piloting a “hospital education project” aimed at “demonstrating” to Catholic nurses and health workers that there is no opposition between being a Catholic and performing abortions.

On March 7, the two pro-abortion groups were expecting Brazilian Minister of Health Humberto Costa to announce a new “Norm for the Humane Treatment of Abortion.” Among other things, the norm would allow any woman to request and receive an abortion at any public hospital by saying she has been raped, without the need of any corroborating testimony.

“This is just a way the government would legalize abortion without going through the debate needed to pass a law at the Congress and, more importantly, without any public discussion,” said Alberto Monteiro, a noted Brazilian pro-life leader.

According to Monteiro, in De­­­cember 2004 President Lula signed a document called the “National Plan for Women’s Policy,” crafted with the help of the U.N. Development Fund for Women. The document states that Brazil must “review its punitive policy regarding the voluntary interruption of pregnancy” — in other words, legalize abortion.

Nevertheless, Brazilian pro-life leaders mobilized its campaign of letters and e-mails protesting for the possible legalization of abortion. The campaign forced the government to back down and abandon, at least temporarily, the announcement of the norm.

Battle Continues

Despite the fact that at least five top ministers of Lula’s government are actively cooperating with the pro-abortion lobby in order to legalize abortion before the end of 2005, pro-life leaders are convinced that the uphill battle can still be won with the support of the mostly pro-life population.

Father Luiz Carlos Lodi da Cruz, who heads the pro-life commission of the diocese of Anapolis, says that the support of the people can prevent the government from reviewing the abortion law.

In fact, on March 7, it was disclosed that a national poll carried out by the independent polling company IBOPE, upon the request of Catolicas pelo Direito de Decidir, had found that support for abortion upon demand declined from 10% to 3% in the last two years.

“Considering the incredible effort made in the last years by the pro-abortion lobby, this is really good news,” Father Lodi said.

He added that pro-lifers must increase the pressure by sending e-mails and letters to the Ministry of Health and other government offices expressing their opposition to any attempt to legalize abortion through a “norm” that would ignore the will of the Brazilian people.

Clea Carpi da Rocha, until recently an attorney for the federal government’s National Council for Women’s Rights, said a pro-life campaign should be also joined by true feminists.

She said Brazilian feminists have been co-opted by international pro-abortion agencies that fund abortion.

“The majority of feminists receive money from outside — from such sources as the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation,” Rocha said.

She said that Brazil must improve its social services: Brazil’s overall rate of 60 deaths per 1,000 births is six times higher than that of the U.S. But she rejects the idea that gender inequality justifies abortion.

“There is no argument that justifies taking away a life,” Rocha said. ”Life should always be preserved.”

Alejandro Bermúdez

writes from Lima, Peru.