NEARLY 1000 women and their partners are to be publicly denounced for having illegal abortions in a Brazil clinic,as women's groups slammed the move as an inquisition.
Prosecutor Paulo Cesar dos Passos said that 150 women in western Campo Grande have so far been reported to authorities for ending their pregnancies, and he expects the number to reach 1000.
"We're also processing their lovers and husbands who paid, accepted or encouraged the procedure," he said, adding the names of some 10,000 women who went to the Campo Grande clinic from 2000 onward have been made public.
Abortion is illegal in Brazil, except in cases of rape or when pregnancy puts a mother's life at risk.
Penalties for lawbreakers range from one to three years in jail.
Mr Cesar said he was offering the suspects a deal to avoid trial by remaining confined to the city for a period of two years.
But a local judge, he added, was instead proposing the women do community service in local nurseries or other equivalent jobs.
The case has raised the hackles of women's groups who say Mr Cesar's handling of abortion law breakers is akin to an inquisition because it violates the women's right to privacy.
"All the women who went to the clinic have to prove their innocence and yet, their names have been posted in public," Womens' Union and People's Legal Service spokeswoman Amelinha Telles told CBN radio.
She slammed the alternative punishment being offered the women, saying "they are held responsible and blamed for losing a child, and now they have to replace that loss.''
Mr Cesar said the women accept the deal of their own free will and "in the presence of a lawyer".
Brazil's Government favors lifting the abortion ban entirely, but has run into stern opposition from the Catholic Church - an influential institution in a country with the world's biggest Catholic population.
Brazil's Supreme Court is currently deciding whether an exception to the abortion ban should be made in case of dire malformations, focusing on two cases of babies born with Anencephaly, or lacking a forebrain. A ruling is expected before the end of the year.
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