Defending the Indefensible: Therapeutic Abortion in Nineteenth-Century Brazilian Medical Discourse

This article analyzes how Brazilian physicians in the nineteenth century framed therapeutic abortion as a lifesaving intervention, arguing for professional authority amid religious and legal constraints. Drawing on medical theses from the Faculdades de Medicina of Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, it explores how doctors defended abortion in cases of obstructed labor, when maternal death was imminent. Physicians appealed to humanitarian urgency, theological reinterpretation, and legal ambiguity to justify their opinions on therapeutic abortion. The article identifies three key sites of contention: opposition from the Catholic Church, medical debates between abortion and cesarean section, and shifting legal frameworks. Much of the debate examined here unfolded under the 1830 Criminal Code, which criminalized abortion without providing explicit protection for therapeutic interventions. Later, the 1890 Penal Code formally recognized therapeutic abortion, but only conditionally, imposing legal liability on physicians in cases of maternal death. This study argues that medical authority over therapeutic abortion emerged through a fragile and contested form of recognition, negotiated within overlapping regimes of law, religion, and medical ethics, and constrained in practice by legal uncertainty and the threat of professional liability.