The multiple meanings of 'risk': views on the abortion of non-viable fetuses among Brazilian medical doctors and magistrates

Abstract

The article seeks to understand the conceptions of 'risk' produced in the medical field as they come to be interpreted in the legal field. It draws on legal decisions concerning authorization for aborting fetuses bearing anomalies incompatible with life, and on non-directive interviews with medical doctors and magistrates. The category of 'risk' was found to be subject to considerable manipulation by both doctors and magistrates in being deployed as moral justification for the abortion of non-viable fetuses. Abortion is thus displaced from the sphere of individual choice to the domain of therapeutic abortion. The article also highlights the polyvalence of risk discourse, since this notion is deployed both to affirm and to deny legal authorizations for abortion, and to attribute responsibility for abortion decisions to doctors.