Para gestar, parir e cuidar "direito"é preciso mais do que ser mãe

Abstract

This research investigates the role of law as an instrument of power-knowledge in the regulation of motherhood, analyzing how law contributes to the construction and maintenance of a maternal ideal that excludes certain female bodies. The investigation is developed along three main axes. Initially, it explores the cultural construction of motherhood from birth, demonstrating how naturalizing discourses act in the processes of internalization of social roles, as well as demonstrating the process of subjectivation of the body as a body that should be feminine and consequently maternal. Then, it analyzes the direct action of law on the bodies of women-mothers, through norms, regulations, omissions and, mainly, punishments. The analysis of judgments for the removal of parental authority reveals an unequal and punitive judgment directed at black women and women from lower classes, evidencing the selectivity in the application of norms and the exclusion of these bodies from the ideal of motherhood. An ideal that includes as women's responsibility the duties of caring for the home and children. From this point on, the limits of the traditional concept of family and the need for recognition and redistribution of care work are discussed. Furthermore, as an effect of this work and tied to biopolitical concepts, the right-duty to breastfeed and the situation of mothers deprived of liberty are addressed. Finally, the research discusses the criminalization of abortion as a form of control over female bodies, connecting Foucault's biopower to Mbembe's necropolitics and Silvia Federici's critique, arguing that the law operates a politics of death by denying basic rights to women considered "abject", culminating in a symbolic and, in some cases, physical death. The author positions herself based on her own experience with motherhood, using the matrifocal narrative as a tool for denouncing and re-articulating hegemonic motherhood.