Unsafe abortion: a patriarchal and racialized picture of women’s poverty

This article aims to analyze how the reality of criminalized abortion reinforces inequalities of gender, race/ethnicity, and class, which are co-produced within the context of sexage, understood here as the appropriation of women by men, reducing them to the status of thing. The bibliographic and documentary research was carried out, from the perspective of materialistic, historical and dialectical analysis. The main conclusion is that criminalization reinforces the logic of social inequalities in Brazil and the world. This is because poor and black women are the most affected, those who die the most, and because almost all unsafe abortions in the world occur in the peripheric economies. Thus, the consequences of criminalized abortion, whether moral, health or economic, mainly impact poor, black, young women living in peripheral economies.

Keywords:
Abortion; Sexage; Patriarchy; Racism; Social class