A Brazilian woman who says she became pregnant after being raped in March should have been granted access to a legal abortion. But when she sought to terminate the pregnancy at a hospital, she was told she needed a police report, despite it not being a legal requirement. In Brazil, abortion is legally restricted to cases of rape, life-threatening risks to the pregnant woman or if the fetus has no functioning brain. Theoretically, when a pregnancy results from sexual violence, the victim’s word should suffice for access to the procedure. In practice, women encounter significant barriers to ending a pregnancy.
