Outrage in Brazil as health ministry prepares to instruct women on how to perform illegal abortions

by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

BRAZIL, July 12, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) — When Brazil’s lead presidential candidate Dilma Rousseff was confronted with her pro-abortion past during the 2010 elections, she protested and claimed that she was opposed to the killing of the unborn.

Dilma Rousseff and Obama in Brazil in 2011

As her poll numbers fell and her election was jeopardized, Rousseff signed a public statement promising never to introduce legislation to legalize abortion or silence critics of homosexuality.  She went on to win the presidency by a twelve percent margin.

Pro-lifers are now crying foul as reports have begun to appear in the Brazilian media of plans on the part of the Rousseff administration to instruct women on how to perform chemical abortions, in the name of “reducing the damage caused by clandestine abortions.”

Women who wish to perform a “clandestine” abortion would inform the health ministry of their plans, and receive training on how to perform the abortions, and would even be given the drugs to do so, although they are currently illegal. They will then be given free access to post-abortion medical care at state expense, according to the reports.

Although the Rousseff administration has not yet confirmed or denied the reports, Rousseff’s pro-abortion Secretary of Women’s Policies, Eleonora Menicucci, recently told the Folha de S. Paulo that it “is only a crime to practice abortion itself, but it’s the government’s understanding that it isn’t a crime to give guidance to women on how to carry out an abortion.”

Menicucci, a former Marxist activist who served time with President Rousseff while she was jailed for terrorism in the early 1970s, has publicly boasted of having performed multiple abortions on herself, as well has having received training on how to perform abortions in Colombia. Abortion is illegal in both Brazil and Colombia although it lacks a criminal penalty in a very small minority of cases.

The revelations have led to accusations by pro-lifers of Rousseff contradicting her claim of opposing abortion during the 2010 elections.

The South One division of the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops has issued a statement denouncing Rousseff’s about-face and asking her to fire her offending ministers.

Rousseff’s policy, they write, is to “create incentives for and to spread abortion, favoring the interests of international organizations that want to impose population control on developing countries, even if this brings the President to disrespect the will of the majority of the Brazilian people, which is against abortion, and to violate the most elemental rules of democracy.”

They call for “the immediate firing of Minister Eleonora Menicucci from the Secretariat for Women’s Policies” and the “immediate firing of the Secretary for Medical Attention of the Ministry of Health, Helvecio Magalhaes, who is coordinating the implantation of the new means to be taken by that Ministry.”

Source: LifesSiteNews, via Julio Severo in English: www.lastdayswatchman.blogspot.com

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