Women and the legal practices: an analysis of the bills 478/2007 and 882/2015

Abstract

Although the regulamentation of voluntary abortion directly concerns women's lives, the debate about the criminalization/decriminalization of the practice is often restricted to the moral controversy about the beginning of life. In this context, our aim is to analyze how women are positioned in two emblematic bills that seek to modify the current legal framework, 478/2007 and 882/2015. To do so, we used linguistic repertoires as an analysis tool. According to our results, under bill 478/2007 women are seen merely as objects of control, whereas abortion is turned into a matter of women’s reproductive rights within the proposition 882/2015. In conclusion, the latter conception is fundamental to overcoming the negative effects on women’s health, but it is also necessary to build a context where women are able to constitute themselves as morally autonomous to make their own decisions.