Carla Gallo's documentary “O Aborto dos outros” is a direct statement of the dissimulation with which the issue of abortion is addressed in Brazil today. 
There are distinct motives for pronouncements on the issue of abortion these days. Reasons formulated as opinions that, carefully read, prove to cover up what is really intended with the legal prohibition of this very familiar practice. Such reasons must be analyzed with the intention of putting the question in its due place, namely, that abortion is a women's problem and that men and institutions, for whom sexism – the determination of the sexual difference in which women are seen like “sex” itself - is a method of control, they seek to dominate the discourse on abortion. It could not be otherwise, since abortion in the way it is treated in Brazil today only makes one see the status of power in the hand – and more precisely in the order of speech – of men against women. In this sense, it is also worth taking into account that there is, in addition to the prohibition of the practice, a certain avoidance of the act of theorizing about abortion on the part of women. Men talk about abortion, women – with rare exceptions – seem not to feel comfortable defending their own cause. But of course it's not just about that. Letting women decide is not a desirable practice in a patriarchal system, and we need to start by preventing them from speaking.
By the way, patriarchy is where women are subjugated through discourse. Therefore, it should not be understood only as a universal model of rationality, ethics and aesthetics that result from it, organizing itself as an ideology, but as the daily practice of this rationality that instrumentalizes women. Now, patriarchy is not only metaphysical, but must be seen in its ethical-political foundation that is defined by action against women. This is how it constitutes itself as the proper name of the violence that weaves a thought and practice against women from the family to advertising, from motherhood to pornography.
To say against in this case is to rigorously define that the women who can still be subjugated by the illegality of abortion are the socially and economically disadvantaged. Those who remain under biopolitical command, without assuming that they can be masters of their bodies. Without their own interpretations of what their body, their own life is, poor women are reduced to the condition of procreating females, only to be demoted, if they practice abortion, to the condition of mere defendants for having gone against the order. In Brazilian common sense, the discourse holds that women's fulfillment lies in motherhood and femininity. Anyone who does not obey this order of speech may be cruelly punished.
That society becomes more democratic means that patriarchy gives way to women's choice over their own bodies. And this choice is affirmed in a speech as a reaction against the sexist patriarchal order that until today is disliked in several instances of this Brazil politically and ideologically subjugated to patriarchy.
two forms of silence
Women, the real ones involved in the issue of abortion, rarely comment on it. There are at least two forms of silence at play on this issue. In the first place, the silence derived from self-indulgence and alienation. A cultural silence that defines the power of speech as something masculine and, by contrast, “anti-feminine”. Even nowadays many women fall into the essentialist trap, the one that defends that women should not talk too much to avoid the chatter they are accused of since the philosophical-literary tradition. In the essentialist discourse, “the woman” is a non-speaking essence. The cultural, historical and social background that constitutes gender is disregarded. The discursive control behind every definition is disregarded. This is how a woman should be silent, as if articulate speech, which exposes ideas, was against the nature of women and not a juridical-cultural construction.
This silence is alienated, it is produced. Its consequence is the historical fact that women as a “class” or group did not build theories, were not authorized, nor did they authorize themselves to be theorists, scientists, or politicians, that is, beings who dominate the functioning of discourse and can exercise power from it, whether in the field of knowledge or in the field of professional policy.
But there is another silence. One that is practiced without alienation by women ideologically free from patriarchy. Morally uncompromised, or financially free, they don't have to respond to your impositions. They practice abortions according to personal/corporal needs without anyone or any statistics needing to know about it. They don't depend on the public health system, they don't need to confess to the priest, often they don't even have a life as a couple with a man to whom they must account for their actions. Who they are, what they want, how and where they do it is something that remains under the veil of clandestinity which, in this case, is nothing more than the fact of reality. Clandestine is every possible practice that shows the insufficiency of the law and the contradictions of morality.
Kafka in the short story "The Silence of the Sirens" stated that the sirens' silence is a more terrible weapon than their singing. Perhaps someone has escaped his corner, but certainly no one has escaped his silence, says Kafka. Such silence is women's freedom unbearable to patriarchy. It is also your weapon. Unfortunately, however, as a weapon it is not within reach of culturally and economically disadvantaged women. Carla Gallo's documentary shows women who are victims of the discourse and the system regarding the impracticality of abortion, women who suffer under the yoke of patriarchy as if they were mere animals that disobeyed their masters.
habeas corpus
The documentary O Aborto dos outros is, in this sense, the exposition of a real claim to the right over one's own body. He suggests that the issue of abortion in Brazil should be treated according to the right of habeas corpus. Valid for those who can afford a lawyer, the right of habeas corpus should be elevated to more than a legal principle when it comes to the relationship between women and their bodies. Habeas corpus should be taken culturally, becoming a true ethics in the fight against the appropriation that patriarchy exercises over women's bodies. Women's bodies must be given back to women themselves. Or was it lost in time or was there never consent for men - society as a whole? - command particular women's bodies, their desire to be or not to be mothers.
The discussion about the abstract question of the life of the embryo present in the body of a woman who does not want to develop a fetus is nothing more than a covering element for the biopolitical control over women's bodies. In the same way, we can no longer deal with the discussion that runs in common sense and that divides the population between being in favor or against abortion when in fact in Brazil today it is about being in favor of the legalization of abortion or against the legalization of abortion. of abortion. The question of legalization is legal and, as such, a problem of power, of knowing who commands, who decides, who holds the truth in his own favor.
Only the struggle of women themselves can change this state of affairs. Meanwhile, some more lucid men, freed from patriarchal discourse and realizing that the issue does not concern them, join women in the fight for a fairer society.
But only women will be able to seek justice for themselves and for those who like them suffer in the collar of patriarchy.
Watch "The Abortion of Others"
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Article published on the website of philosopher Marcia Tiburi.
