Reproductive Self-Determination in Brazil. Strategies of Resistance

Faculty Member Name: Simone Bohn
Faculty Member email: sbohn@yorku.ca
Department/School: Department of Politics
Project Title: Reproductive Self-Determination in Brazil. Strategies of Resistance

Description of Research Project:

Reproductive self-determination refers to women’s ability to decide on childbearing matters, which cannot materialize without legal abortion services. So what strategies of resistance are women left with when abortion is illegal in their home countries?

This research project focuses on the case of Brazil, where abortion is a crime in all circumstances but is devoid of penalties (such as jail time) in three situations (gestations resulting from rape, non-viable fetus, and pregnancies whose continuation risks the mother’s life). The goal is to understand two strategies of resistance that organized women in Brazil have mounted. The first is a transnational initiative that involves sending individual women seeking abortion services to neighboring Colombia, which decriminalized the practice. The second is a two-pronged domestic strategy, which centers on helping individual women (whose gestation fits one of the exceptional circumstances) access publicly funded abortion services in Brazil. Unfortunately, during the Bolsonaro presidency, conservative actors (legislators, ministers, judges, and health professionals) have acted to impede that access. The second facet of the domestic strategy focuses on the legal framework. It involves fighting for progressive abortion reform while resisting any further attempt to limit reproductive self-determination.

Using a mixed-methods approach, which combines qualitative interviews with the analysis of archival data, this project will contribute to the literature on abortion reform, transnational activism, race-ethnicity and health equity, public healthcare design, and gendered public policies. This study will significantly aid women from oppressive societies so that they have more agency in pursuing reproductive self-determination. The ultimate goal is to create a body of evidence that enables organized women to persuade public policymakers and members of the judiciary to foster change in the existing regulatory frameworks that criminalize abortion.

Undergraduate Student Responsibilities:

The DARE Researcher will meet with the applicant regularly throughout the Summer of 2024 (May to August) and will be responsible for carrying out weekly activities in a timely fashion. The researcher will commit to the training process, especially regarding Ethics procedures for dealing with confidential data, before the beginning of the analysis of interview material.
To assist the project, the applicant will train the DARE Undergraduate Researcher in the different phases of the research process, particularly in the following domains: ethical procedures for dealing with confidential data; organization of interview material; qualitative content analysis, including assisted development of coding procedures and instruments; writing conference abstract proposals; and assisting with the knowledge mobilization plan.

The undergraduate student will assist the applicant primarily with a.) updating the literature (particularly on abortion reform, and lawfare); b.) collecting bills in the Brazilian congress related to abortion (since 1985); c.) collecting secondary data (such as census data [related to women’s health], and public opinion data [related to moral
values and abortion]; d.) citation management using specific software; e.) input qualitative data (interviews) into Nvivo. The PI will provide training and supervision to the undergraduate research assistant.

Please note the applicant will pay (using the applicant’s own research funds) for the DARE Researcher to take a 6-hour course on N-Vivo12, which is software used for analyzing qualitative data, such as the interview material. In addition, the applicant will take a proactive role in supporting the student design their poster presentation, implement said design, and prepare the presentation of the key findings.

Qualifications Required:

In addition to the DARE competition’s official guidelines, the applicant will utilize the following criteria to select candidates for the position:
• a third- or fourth-year Political Science major, or Social Science major, is strongly preferred;
• be a highly motivated and achieving student, with a genuine interest in taking an active role in the different phases of the research process;
• have a superior GPA;
• must have basic knowledge of Excel;
• must read in Portuguese (elementary level). Having knowledge of written Spanish is an asset.

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