STF Minister Orders Review of Administrative Steps Behind Contested Abortion Votes

Overview

• Minister Flávio Dino instructed STF technical and administrative teams to provide records and a timeline that explain how the extraordinary virtual session was added to the court agenda and how votes were recorded.
• Religious and jurist groups UJUCASP, IBDR and the CNBB have filed petitions seeking annulment of specific votes, arguing that procedural irregularities affected votes in the abortion case.
• The petitions focus on votes tied to an extraordinary virtual session on October 17, 2025, including a vote recorded a day before Luís Roberto Barroso's retirement and a vote attributed to Rosa Weber who retired in 2023.
• Critics say the key issues include whether the session was lawfully convened under the court’s rules, whether votes were entered into the virtual system in the correct order, and whether retirees’ recorded positions should remain in the file.
• If the court finds procedural defects and annuls one or more votes, the ruling that described decriminalization of voluntary abortion in the first 12 weeks could be reopened or require re‑deliberation, making the technical review consequential for the final legal outcome.