A presentation by Marta Rodriguez de Assis Machado, professor at FGV Sao Paulo Law School. This event is part of the Fundamental Rights Research Colloquium hosted by the Centre for Fundamental Rights.
Prof. Machado's paper is part of a symposium on "The Appropriation of Human Rights by the New Global Right". It analyses the legal strategies used by the Brazilian anti-abortion movement, observing its frames and argumentative strategies. It contextualizes the importance of the anti-abortion movement within the recent conservative wave, as the movement had recently undergone a process of renewal becoming one of the support bases of right-wing populist President Jair Bolsonaro’s Government. The new configurations and strategies advanced by the movement reveal the centrality of lawyers and legal strategies, using the language of human rights. An analysis of court documents and public hearings at different political moments highlights recent shifts in anti-abortion legal framings. While human rights language has always been ambivalent and contested, this paper argues that what is taking place in the context of the reframed anti-abortion movement is an appropriation (or misappropriation) of human rights, which distorts its most fundamental feature and advocates for anti-pluralist ends.
Marta Rodriguez de Assis Machado is professor at FGV Sao Paulo Law School. Her research lies in the interdisciplinary field of Law and Legal-Sociology, and focuses on the relations between social movements and Law. She is currently working in the fields of sexual and reproductive rights; racial violence, protest policing, and police accountability. She has recently published the papers “Constitutionalizing abortion in Brazil”; “Anti-racism legislation in Brazil: the role of the Courts in reproducing the myth of racial democracy”, both in the Journal of Constitutional Research; and “The battle over abortion rights in Brazil's state arenas 1995-2006” on the Harvard Health and Human Rights Journal. In the legal field, her work focuses on legal theory and criminal law. The books “Risk Society and Criminal Law, an evaluation of new legal-political trends” (2005); “Legal theory and conflict: a critical perspective of legal rationality” (2012); and the edited volume “Responsibility and Penalty in Democratic Rule of Law: theoretical challenges, public policies and the development of democracy” (2016) reflects on how new phenomena are challenging and re-shaping the criminal law field.
Prior registration is required. Registered attendees will receive the dial-in details as well as a draft paper, on which the presentation is based, via e-mail prior to the event.
