Abstract
Sexual abuse and legal abortion are taboo subjects in our society. On the health area, the psychologist works on different fields, such as psychological evaluation from the request of legal abortion, that will end or not on its approval, and also in a further moment, either the care on wards or ambulatorial treatment. Relying on a case report, this article aims to contemplate the possibilities and challenges from psychological work on healthcare to pregnant women from sexual violence and seek legal abortion. For this purpose, we divide this article in three moments. On the first, it will find definitions, statistics, and historical data about both issues, including national and international information. On the second, we bring notes called ‘guiding pillar,’ that is, we interact with fundamental aspects from this area, such as gender, family, sexuality, and trauma. On the third one, in-depth discussions we dwell on psychological care tied to the concepts previously addressed, critically analyzing one of the hardest moments of working in this area: the evaluation to approve (or refuse) the request for abortion. We lean over psychoanalytic thoughts and argue that this psychological work is primarily an offer of care, committed to the needs from those who seek us and to promoting good mental health and, also, we consider that psychology is essential to acknowledge the suffering and the effects of social and institutional neglect on the lives of the people seen.
Keywords:
Sex Offenses; Legal Abortion; Psychology; Health