In Brazil, a woman only has acess to legal, safe abortion, when the pregnancy endangers her life or it's the result of rape. This leads to about thousands of women every year having unsafe abortions, and hundreds dying as a result, not to mention the health complications that a lot of them suffer. Post-abortion curettage it's today the most common procedure being performed by the public health services. Treating abortion as a public health issue is one of the goals on the National Human Rights Program. And yet, some politicians want to further restrict a woman's acess to obstetric care and safe, legal abortion by presenting a Legislative Bill that grants ''absolute priority'' to the rights of the ''unborn'' (Brazilian Constitution doesn't grant any rights to embryos or fetuses, though abortion is considered a ''crime against life'' by Penal Law) By specifically granting rights even to fertilized embyros BEFORE they're implanted on a woman's uterus, this Bill would ban research with steam-cells, deny pregnant women acess to most forms of therapeutic abortion, and to a lot of vital health treatments, such as chimiotherapy, and lead to human rights violations experienced by some women in the US, such as forced bedrest and criminal investigation/persecution for ''causing'' a miscarriage.

The link to the petition for Brazilian residents is here: http://womensrights.change.org/petitions/view/rejeite_o_estatuto_do_nascituro_proteja_a_saude_das_mulheres_e_a_terapia_com_celulas-tronco_2 I intend this petition to be signed by non-Brazilians only, showing the international outrage over this dreadful legislation.

I'm writing this petition on behalf of the Brazilian Journeys for Safe, Legal Abortion. The petition is written both in Portuguese (so that the recipient can read it) and in English (so you can be sure of what it is that you're signing). Feel free to run the text trough Google Translator if you want.