Campanha #EUVOUCONTAR - ciberativismo, cidadania e memórias de mulheres pela descriminalização do aborto no Brasil

Abstract

This study focuses on the internet campaign #euvoucontar (I will tell), which defends the decriminalisation of abortion in Brazil. I analysed five of the campaign videos to evaluate the ways in which Anis’ (a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) feminist discourses and women’s memories affected the perceptions of Facebook users. In this study, I demonstrate the ways in which the campaign uses cyber activism to defend the feminist cause. The videos present accounts of physical and emotional suffering, as well as of inadequate health care to women who interrupt their pregnancies in Brazil. They also address women’s fear to be sued or arrested since having an abortion in the country can be punished with a sentence of imprisonment of up to three years. For this research, I tracked the hashtag #euvoucontar since September 2017 to analyse how this pro-abortion initiative affected Facebook page users. The campaign has spread its message on social media and on the Anis NGO’s website by using videos that started to be published on a weekly basis after 28 September 2017 - the Latin American and Caribbean Day for the Decriminalisation of Abotion in Latin America. In one of the videos, Rebeca Mendes, a 30-year old university student from the city of São Paulo, tells her story. She requested permission to have an abortion from the Federal Supreme Court, claiming that she had the right to interrupt her pregnancy. The NGO adopts the perspectives of women who have abortions as narrative strategies since it considers that having an abortion is a public health issue. The research draws from qualitative approaches, with interviews, questionnaires, but also quantitative data obtained from Anis’ Facebook page. From a methodological perspective, I used the concept of mediations from Cultural Studies and ethnographic approaches to analyse the posts on the Anis Facebook page that contained women’s memories of abortion and messages from users.