Sexual and reproductive rights in the Brazilian congress: a decade of struggle (2010s)

The article analyses the sexual and reproductive rights policy agenda in the Brazilian National Congress from a state-centred perspective to verify whether over the last decade the inability to legislate on these topics has persisted in the federal arena and whether the centrality of the debate in the electoral sphere has also been translated to the legislative branch. To do so, it employs document analysis of legislative proposals, namely 184 of 43,124 bills submitted to the National Congress from 2011 to 2020. Out of this amount, 93 bills refer to LGBT rights and 91 to abortion. These were classified according to the date of submission, type and procedural status, author of the distribution, as well as whether their content is favourable or contrary to the rights of LGBT people and to abortion. The results point to a scenario with few changes in legislative behaviour in the 2010s, in which these issues remain non-central in the Brazilian Congress and a low probability that any of the proposals will be converted into law persists, although there was an increase in lawmakers' interest on this agenda during the last legislative term and a shift in the assessment of the bills submitted in 2020.