Abstract

This article addresses the compulsory seizing of children from vulnerable women in Brazil. Its objectives were: to discuss the violation of the right to maternity; to present the imposed restrictions especially on poor, black and indigenous women; the strategic control over their lives and children, and the resistance movements that oppose segregation. The sources of the research were: narratives of women in vulnerable situations, family members and health workers; interviews with strategic actors; document analysis; field journal. It became evident that vulnerabilities -linked to the criminalization of poverty and racial prejudice- have justified these separations. The lack of responsibility that State and society practice towards the support network for women, the devaluation of non-hegemonic productions of maternity, and the reinforcement of a ‘reason of the world’, that produces violence as a tool for exclusion establishing practical limits on the right to maternity. Women and children are disregarded in their singularities. Resistance movements have shown that intersectoral dialogues are an alternative to overcome discrimination and vulnerabilities.

Key words:
Ethnic violence; Gender based violence; Sexual and reproductive rights

Introduction

The Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil of 1988 included the protection of maternity as a social right. However, many women still face barriers in the exercise of the right to maternity, suffering the removal of their children by imposition of the State.

The foundations for this type of violence were laid out in colonial Brazil. Reports beginning in the 16th century tell stories regarding the compulsory separation of indigenous mothers from their children: women who were abused and enslaved by the colonizers and also had their children kidnapped. The children were cut off from their cultures and lost their names, family and ethnic ties. The catechization of the indigenous children by priests and missionaries corroborated the acculturation on behalf of the interests of the colonizers’ values¹1 Pereira PJ, Oliveira MCFA. Adoção de crianças e adolescentes no Brasil: sua trajetória e suas realidades. Campinas: Núcleo de Estudos de População Elza Berquó, Unicamp; 2016..

Although there is evidence of the removal of these children from their families in colonial Brazil, there is a dearth of research and documentary evidences²2 Carajá AF. Diário Cartográfico das mães que perdem seus filhos e filhas pelas mães do Estado: paisagens que se repetem[dissertação]. Belo Horizonte: Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; 2019. [acessado 2021 Jan 14]. Disponível em: https://repositorio.ufmg.br/handle/1843/1/browse?type=author&order=ASC&rpp=20&value=Adriana+Fernandes+Caraj%C3%A1. The restrictions imposed on mothers included the act of breastfeeding and this situation was later reverted in order to use indigenous women to breastfeed the colonizers’ children. Through this process wet-nurses were instituted in Brazil³3 Bosi MLM, Machado MT. Amamentação: um resgate histórico. Caderno Esp - Escola de Saúde Pública do Ceará 2005 [periódico na internet]. [acessado 2020 Jun 20]. Disponível em: http://www.aleitamento.com.br/upload%5Carquivos%5Carquivo1_1688.pdf
http://www.aleitamento.com.br/upload%5Ca... .

With the black slave trade, starting in the 17th century, black women and their children also became the target of this violence. Black women began to act as wet-nurses and their children were sent to be slaves or to shelters. As a result of the Free Womb Law, many children of female slaves were prevented from living with their mothers, although they worked for their masters until they turned 21²2 Carajá AF. Diário Cartográfico das mães que perdem seus filhos e filhas pelas mães do Estado: paisagens que se repetem[dissertação]. Belo Horizonte: Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; 2019. [acessado 2021 Jan 14]. Disponível em: https://repositorio.ufmg.br/handle/1843/1/browse?type=author&order=ASC&rpp=20&value=Adriana+Fernandes+Caraj%C3%A1.

During the Military Dictatorship, the compulsory separation of mothers and children involved torture and assassinations carried out by the Navy Intelligence and Internal Defense Operations Centers⁴4 Reina E. Cativeiro sem fim: as histórias dos bebês, crianças e adolescentes sequestrados pela ditadura militar no Brasil. São Paulo: Alameda; 2019.. In the same period, there are also records of violations committed by the Indian Protection Service against indigenous women and children, with the participation of military personnel, landowners, and civil servants⁵5 Brasil. Ministério Público Federal. Relatório Figueiredo [documento online]; 2019. [acessado 2019 Mai 1]. Disponível em: http://www.mpf.mp.br/atuacao-tematica/ccr6/dados-da-atuacao/grupos-de-trabalho/violacao-dos-direitos-dos-povos-indigenas-e-registro-militar/relatorio-figueiredo
http://www.mpf.mp.br/atuacao-tematica/cc... .

Moreover, the historiography of compulsory separation of mothers and children also includes regimes of isolation. Women in psychiatric hospitals, with or without mental suffering, have been forced to give up their children⁶6 Arbex D. Holocausto brasileiro. São Paulo: Geração Editorial; 2013.. The practices of compulsory isolation and internment were also hallmarks of the leprosy control policy in Brazil: people with the disease were collected in Hospital Colonies and many children, separated from their parents, segregated in Total Institutions⁷7 Monteiro YN. Violência e profilaxia: os preventórios paulistas para filhas e filhos de portadores de hanseníase. Saúde e Sociedade 1998; 7(1):3-26..

The struggle for re-democratization and human rights slowed the pace of practice of such violence. However, in the 2000s, the government - through decisions by the Public Ministry and the Judiciary - once again ordered the removal of children from mothers in vulnerable situations, under allegations of risks to the children. Many babies have been taken from mothers who are drug users and/or homeless⁸8 Jorge AO, Merhy EE, Pontes MG. Introduzindo a pesquisa: uma trajetória de encontros. Saúde em Redes 2018; 4(Supl. 1):9-26.. There are also reports of abductions of babies from mothers with visual impairment, mental suffering, situation of deprivation of liberty, or belonging to a certain ethnic group, such as the Guarani and Kaiowá Indians who live in Mato Grosso do Sul (MS)²2 Carajá AF. Diário Cartográfico das mães que perdem seus filhos e filhas pelas mães do Estado: paisagens que se repetem[dissertação]. Belo Horizonte: Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; 2019. [acessado 2021 Jan 14]. Disponível em: https://repositorio.ufmg.br/handle/1843/1/browse?type=author&order=ASC&rpp=20&value=Adriana+Fernandes+Caraj%C3%A1.

In Belo Horizonte (BH), the institutional practice of compulsory internment in shelters for the children of impoverished women or women in vulnerable situations, called “the orphan mothers”⁸8 Jorge AO, Merhy EE, Pontes MG. Introduzindo a pesquisa: uma trajetória de encontros. Saúde em Redes 2018; 4(Supl. 1):9-26., gained visibility, starting in 2014, when it was made official through legal instruments and provoked resistance movements. In the same circumstances, compulsory separations are reported in Porto Alegre⁹9 Belloc MM, Cabral KV, Oliveira CS. A desmaternalização das gestantes usuárias de droga: violação de direitos e lacuna do cuidado. Saúde em Redes 2018; 4(Supl. 1):37-50., São Paulo¹⁰10 Silveira PM, Hernanez ML, Furtado LAC, Feuwerwerker LCM, Moreno HV, Santos HE. Oh pedaço de mim, oh metade amputada de mim... Saúde em Redes 2018; 4(Supl. 1):51-59. e Rio de Janeiro¹¹11 Chagas MC, Abrahão AL. Desobediência civil na produção singular do cuidado em rede: outros olhares para mães usuárias de drogas. Saúde em Redes 2018; 4(Supl. 1):61-74..

The pain experienced by mothers and separated children spans generations encompassing many stories, not always reported in official sources. This article seeks to reflect on this violence caused by the curtailment of the right to be a mother in Brazil, presenting the control strategies and limits imposed on the lives of women, especially poor, black and indigenous women and their children, as well as the struggle movements that oppose these segregations.

Methods

The Observatory of Health Policies and Care at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), linked to the National Network of Observatories on Public Policy in Health and Health Education, has been dedicated since 2015 to the understanding of the meanings of this practice that compulsorily separates mothers and children. Among the products of this research initiative, there are three dissertations built from qualitative approaches of the interference type using cartographic exercises.

Interference research is a mode of research that does not presuppose intervention on the other, but admits, from the interaction, the presence of noise and discomfort that provoke institutional and personal dislocations. It is a demanding mode of research, which requires a careful listening to the other, and a creative harmony to make possible an interaction entangled with the production of life¹²12 Moebus RLN, Merhy EE, Silva E. O usuário cidadão como guia. Como pode a onda elevar-se acima da montanha. In: Merhy EE, Baduy RS, Seixas CT, Almeida DES, Slomp Júnior H, organizadores. Avaliação compartilhada do cuidado em saúde: surpreendendo o instituído nas redes. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Hexis; 2016. p. 43-53..

Cartography, in turn, proposes to give visibility to social enunciations accompanying complex processes, breaking away from superficial views of situations and diving into the intensities that the heterogeneity of human encounters is able to produce¹³13 Rolnik S. Cartografia sentimental. Porto Alegre: Editora da UFRGS; 2016.. The production of cartographies intertwined to the tensions that have caused the judicialization of the lives of vulnerable people represented a potent alternative to “establish another combat”¹⁴14 Pelbart PP. O avesso do niilismo: cartografias do esgotamento. São Paulo: n-1 edições; 2013., and dignified solidarity for mothers and children who are compulsorily separated. In this scenario, researchers in the world, crossed by the encounters produced throughout the investigations, experience an “exercise of unlearning what is already known”.¹⁵15 Abrahão AL, Merhy EE, Gomes MPC, Tallemberg C, Chagas MC, Rocha M, Santos NPL, Silva E, Vianna L. O pesquisador in-mundo e o processo de produção de outras formas de investigação em saúde. In: Merhy EE, Baduy RS, Seixas CT, Almeida DES, Slomp Júnior H, organizadores. Avaliação compartilhada do cuidado em saúde: surpreendendo o instituído nas redes. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Hexis; 2016. p.22-30. and the production of new visibilities.

This article presents a selection of the main findings of three dissertations produced within the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) School of Medicine. Primary sources were: a) ten narratives of women in situations of vulnerability (use of alcohol and other drugs, street situation, poverty and being Black, compulsory hospitalizations due to leprosy), one narrative with a family member and two with health workers who accompanied the separations; b) 20 interviews with strategic actors, being three managers of maternity hospitals and ten workers of the Unified Health System (SUS) in Belo Horizonte (central level, maternity hospitals, basic health units (UBS) and street clinics), one representative of the Public Defender’s Office, one of the Municipal Health Council, one of the Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents, two Guardianship Councilors, one university professor from the feminist movement and one lawyer from the Human Rights Clinic of UFMG.

The documentary analysis included: minutes of meetings provided by the Secretary of Security of Belo Horizonte; technical reports and transcripts of public hearings; analysis of the norms of the MP and Judiciary; reports made available by FUNAI, Indigenous Missionary Council (Conselho Indigenista Missionário), Center for the Promotion and Defense of Indigenous Peoples of the Public Defender’s Office of the Ministry of Health (Núcleo de Promoção e Defesa dos Povos Indígenas da Defensoria Pública do MS); and the final document of the VI Kunãgue Aty Guasu Kaiowá Guarani. Other sources used were the field diaries of the researchers.

The narratives were reports of experience produced from the free speech of the actors, who talked about their life experiences regarding the separation of mother and child, without much interference from the researcher. The interviews were conducted based on a previously prepared script, therefore without the same openness.

Narratives and interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. All these contacts were preceded by an explanation about the research and the signing of the Informed Consent Form with guarantee of secrecy and confidentiality. The research was approved by the Committee for Research Ethics (COEP) of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Municipal Health Secretariat of the city of Belo Horizonte and UFMG under opinions number CEP 1756736/2014, CEP 1847486/2016 and CEP 2264660/2017, respectively.

From all this material, extracts were selected that contributed to give visibility to the power and knowledge games that mark the situation experienced by separated mothers and children, in an analytical effort about the guarantee of the right to become a mother in Brazil.

Results and discussion

Repeatedly updated attempts to dominate women’s lives mark the main thread of the investigations that sustain this article. By exposing the production of maternities that do not fit the criteria of a hegemonic reading of the world, mechanisms of control of images, it was possible to unleash discourses and perceptions that weaken women and distort the meanings of their lives, as well as their forms of resistance and opposition to the contemporary colonialist model.¹⁶16 Argolo MM, Araújo R. Construções de gênero das mulheres/mães negras no contexto da violência policial contra adolescentes e jovens. Seminário Internacional Fazendo Gênero 11 & 13th Women's Worlds Congress [anais eletrônicos], Florianópolis; 2017. [acessado 2020 ago 31]. Disponível em: http://www.en.wwc2017.eventos.dype.com.br/resources/anais/1503883048_ARQUIVO_CONSTRUCOESDEGENERODASMULHERES.docxversao3.pdf
http://www.en.wwc2017.eventos.dype.com.b... . In this scenario, which devalues and disregards the heterogeneity of women’s options¹⁷17 Reis GM. Mães órfãs: cartografia das tensões e resistências ao abrigamento compulsório de bebês em Belo Horizonte [dissertação]. Belo Horizonte: Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; 2019., the results of this work show that the affections are reduced to a system of norms that constrains possibilities of creating new and unique ways of living. These biopolitical strategies of control over life¹⁸18 Foucault M. Segurança, território e população. São Paulo: Martins Fontes; 2008. end up imprisoning subjectivations and human relations useful to a certain way of organizing the world. A woman, denounces:

In several meetings, women and workers also wonder about the idealization of the maternal figure. One of them stated:

The model of the available mother, who organizes her life for her children, is the socially accepted parameter for the exercise of motherhood¹⁹19 Badinter E. O conflito, a mulher e a mãe. Rio de Janeiro: Record; 2010.. It corresponds to a discourse that disregards identity constructions, social class, spatialization and territoriality and exposes women to a collective court, regulated by capitalist values and colonialism present and forged in racism, misogyny and machismo¹⁶16 Argolo MM, Araújo R. Construções de gênero das mulheres/mães negras no contexto da violência policial contra adolescentes e jovens. Seminário Internacional Fazendo Gênero 11 & 13th Women's Worlds Congress [anais eletrônicos], Florianópolis; 2017. [acessado 2020 ago 31]. Disponível em: http://www.en.wwc2017.eventos.dype.com.br/resources/anais/1503883048_ARQUIVO_CONSTRUCOESDEGENERODASMULHERES.docxversao3.pdf
http://www.en.wwc2017.eventos.dype.com.b... ^,2020 Oliveira DS. Vivências e enfrentamentos de mulheres que usam drogas no exercício da maternidade [dissertação]. Bahia: Universidade Federal da Bahia, Escola de Enfermagem; 2016..

From this standpoint, there is a widespread assessment that women in situations of vulnerability are incapable of managing their own lives. They have lost -or never had- a leading role and legitimacy. The moral judgment persists, as well as the blaming of women and the refusal of the possibility of overcoming limits. However, in the territories, the limits of this understanding are explicit:

The desire for pregnancy, the experience of being pregnant, and the exercise of motherhood are a priori conceived as inappropriate for these women, even though the practices of care are inscribed in the relationship between mother and child:

It is this way of perceiving the world that operates in favor of taking children away from women in vulnerable situations²¹21 Orsine AOL, Silva KL, Jorge AO, Pereira MO. Sofia: narrativa de uma história de abandono e sequestro dos direitos de vir a ser. Saúde em Redes 2018; 4(Supl. 1):75-85.. In addition to the idealization of motherhood and attempts to eliminate certain conditions of female existence, the criminalization of poverty also appears as a reason to justify separations.

Social vulnerabilities emerge as the main elements in the disputed narratives surrounding the plight of orphan mothers.

In practically all the narratives and interviews, poverty is not an isolated factor of marginalization. Racial and gender discrimination are mixed with this condition, increasing the gap between the idealization of femininity and maternity and the reality experienced by Brazilian women. There are those who expose this gap:

Situations of vulnerability also involve issues related to the strong patriarchal orientation, in turn related to the overall organization of society²²22 Delphy C. Patriarcado (teorias do). In: Hirata H, organizador. Dicionário Crítico do Feminismo. São Paulo: Unesp; 2009.. The social formation of male domination produces actions of oppression over women, reinforcing the female stereotype - domesticated and maternal. Besides this situation, it is worth highlighting the production of the image of the black woman as always at the service of the dominants. From wet nurses to orphan mothers there are great similarities: women remain exposed to the violence and dehumanization of racism resulting from slavery¹⁷17 Reis GM. Mães órfãs: cartografia das tensões e resistências ao abrigamento compulsório de bebês em Belo Horizonte [dissertação]. Belo Horizonte: Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; 2019.^,2323 Pontes MG. Mães órfãs: produzindo novos olhares a partir de modos de existência e resistência singulares [dissertação]. Belo Horizonte: Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; 2019.^,2424 Akotirene C. Interseccionalidade: feminismos plurais. São Paulo: Sueli Carneiro; Pólen; 2019.. Facets of this insensitivity persist and scream to us in the narratives involving the orphan mothers.

In this context, it is needed to take a singular look at the motherhood of black women throughout history. How many times has the right to maternity been taken away from black women in order to serve the white men’s desire? Sometimes producing milk for the white woman’s child, sometimes not caring for her own children in order to care for the white woman’s children, and sometimes generating children for her owner. What does this asymmetry tell us?¹⁷17 Reis GM. Mães órfãs: cartografia das tensões e resistências ao abrigamento compulsório de bebês em Belo Horizonte [dissertação]. Belo Horizonte: Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; 2019.

Davis²⁵25 Davis A. Mulheres, raça e classe. São Paulo: Boitempo; 2016. reports that, with the end of human trafficking, the reproduction of black women was the only way to increase the number of slaves, especially through rape. They were evaluated according to their fertility, as a tool to guarantee the slave labor force. This figure of the black woman, as the womb generating children useful to the dominant way of life is still persistent. They are the main protagonists of the narratives of forced separation between mothers and children.

Currently, the precariousness of social protection policies produces vulnerability in these women, which, along with the lack of an effective care network, justifies the production of precautionary measures. Such measures assume that these conditions would make these women prone to mistreat or even neglect their children.

There is a predominant discourse that produces human beings forgotten by the State, women ignored as subjects and singularities, mothers in vulnerable situations considered disposable, almost garbage, or as Butler would say ²⁶26 Butler J. Quadros de guerra: quando a vida é passível de luto. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira; 2015. “lives that can’t be mourned”.

There are many connections between the forms of segregation in different realities and moments in the history of Brazil. The discriminatory discourse, which judges certain peoples and social conditions as unfit for the exercise of motherhood, based on the slavery heritage, still corresponds to that which instrumentalizes prescriptive and hygienic health actions or policies¹⁷17 Reis GM. Mães órfãs: cartografia das tensões e resistências ao abrigamento compulsório de bebês em Belo Horizonte [dissertação]. Belo Horizonte: Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; 2019.. This is not a coincidence. These practices are inserted in a context of dispute that involves attempts to subjugate and even eliminate people in certain situations of existence. It is in this context that actions such as compulsory isolation and the removal of children, the imposition of preventive clinics, and illegal adoptions, with all their consequences, are undertaken.

Considering the set of sources analyzed, it was possible to identify agents of the State as the main enforcers of segregations. These actions are evident in the production of norms directed to mothers with leprosy, homeless, in precarious homes and/or with a history of drug use, or even in the interventions on the lives of indigenous women.

In this sense, the bureaucratic apparatus of the State has served to organize and implement techniques of control over society and over bodies, fulfilling its role regarding the tactics of governmentality¹⁸18 Foucault M. Segurança, território e população. São Paulo: Martins Fontes; 2008.. The use of institutions such as Public Maternities, Public Ministry and the Childhood and Youth Court to separate mothers and children under the pretexts of drug addiction, extreme poverty or inability to raise children has provided clues that compulsory separations correspond to a strategy of governing lives, which, by penetrating the most intense human relationships, constitutes a violent practice against those who are less in tune with the hegemonic reason²⁷27 Dardot P, Laval C. A nova razão do mundo: ensaio sobre a sociedade neoliberal. São Paulo: Boitempo; 2016..

It is worth pointing out that the interference of the State, sometimes exercising its bio-power over female bodies and children, and in other times lacking the political commitment towards the organization of a support network, cancels the chances of producing care and bonding with the users from those who, in principle, should be caring.

There are tensions within the very structure of the State that reinforce disputes over projects of society, of life, of health, over models of care towards or against a kind of care that considers the singularities of the users. There are those who sustain the importance of mothers and children growing up together, but there are those who argue that situations of vulnerability justify separation, absolutizing limits and denying possibilities, without measuring the devastating effects on so many existences. However, through attentive listening, the sensibility of professionals who perceive the subtleties that involve the lives of these women contributes to the production of new paths.

In contrast to cruelty, there is also the search made by women and by different agents of the State (health workers, justice workers, social workers) to produce new meanings for life. In this setting, the implementation of care policies related to the use of alcohol and other drugs, sexual and reproductive health, and mental health gains prominence in discussions involving the segregation of mothers and children today¹⁷17 Reis GM. Mães órfãs: cartografia das tensões e resistências ao abrigamento compulsório de bebês em Belo Horizonte [dissertação]. Belo Horizonte: Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; 2019.^,2323 Pontes MG. Mães órfãs: produzindo novos olhares a partir de modos de existência e resistência singulares [dissertação]. Belo Horizonte: Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; 2019..

Regarding the recommended model of care to address drug use, for example, it is still common to prioritize ineffective strategies based on the triad abstinence, relapse and punishment²⁸28 Souza TP. Estado e sujeito: a saúde entre a micro e macropolitica de drogas. Campinas: Editora Hucitec; 2018..

Despite the alleged impossibility of a poor woman using drugs and being able to raise children, mothers report finding in motherhood a new meaning to life and a way out to reduce the harmful use of substances. This use is the result of contemporary modes of subjectivation, which impose individualization, loneliness, and pathologization of suffering, intensely affecting women.

We collected many experiences in the field in which motherhood became a potential source of self-care, opening the possibility of a pact with life and configuring itself as a socio-affective device to overcome the harmful use of alcohol and other drugs²⁹29 Franco TB. Fobia de Estado e a resistência ao recolhimento compulsório de bebês. Saúde em Redes 2018; 4(Supl.1):85-98.. Reis et al.³⁰30 Reis SEH, Bonadio IC, Tsunechiro MA, Merighi MAB. O cotidiano de mulheres grávidas moradoras no alojamento de uma maternidade social. Texto Contexto Enferm 2008; 17(3):492-501. indicate that the experience of the pregnancy process can be full of meanings, stimulating women to project future acts, as follows:

This reinforces the urgency of making visible the interdependence among relations involving race, gender, class, and culture. It refers to the need to consider various factors of discrimination as an expression of human rights violations³¹31 Crenshaw K. Documento para o Encontro de Especialistas em Aspectos da Discriminação Racial Relativos ao Gênero. Estudos Feministas 2002; 10(1º semestre):171-188.. It is a political confrontation against arbitrariness and multiple and overlapping vulnerabilities³¹31 Crenshaw K. Documento para o Encontro de Especialistas em Aspectos da Discriminação Racial Relativos ao Gênero. Estudos Feministas 2002; 10(1º semestre):171-188.^,3232 Hirata H. Gênero, classe e raça: interseccionalidade e consubstancialidade das relações sociais. Tempo Soc 2014; 26(1): 61-73.. In fact, in the narratives of women and workers it can be noticed that the repressive and coercive devices about corporeality and life produce distorted senses about rights and, in this context, violations become invisible, isolating the subjects¹⁶16 Argolo MM, Araújo R. Construções de gênero das mulheres/mães negras no contexto da violência policial contra adolescentes e jovens. Seminário Internacional Fazendo Gênero 11 & 13th Women's Worlds Congress [anais eletrônicos], Florianópolis; 2017. [acessado 2020 ago 31]. Disponível em: http://www.en.wwc2017.eventos.dype.com.br/resources/anais/1503883048_ARQUIVO_CONSTRUCOESDEGENERODASMULHERES.docxversao3.pdf
http://www.en.wwc2017.eventos.dype.com.b... .

It was observed as lines of flight that some women decide to give birth in maternity hospitals that are more resistant to judicial interference, or even go to municipalities where the hand of the segregating State is not so present. Hospital evasion, refusal to look for some maternity hospitals, and moving to other municipalities are strategies used by mothers to avoid having their children taken away¹⁷17 Reis GM. Mães órfãs: cartografia das tensões e resistências ao abrigamento compulsório de bebês em Belo Horizonte [dissertação]. Belo Horizonte: Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; 2019.^,2323 Pontes MG. Mães órfãs: produzindo novos olhares a partir de modos de existência e resistência singulares [dissertação]. Belo Horizonte: Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; 2019..

And there are the mothers who have an expectation of taking care of that child. Generally, these are mothers who have already lost partial or total custody of the children they have conceived, and, in this case, many of those who see that there is a great risk of losing custody again, many of them run away. We have already had super complex situations here, super delicate ones, right? (maternity ward manager 3).

Nevertheless, female voices echo in the narratives and claim the right to motherhood as a desire produced in their trajectories.

Resistance movements have shown that the presence of intersectoral dialogues, stripped of institutional truths, constitute an alternative to overcome discrimination and conditions of vulnerability²³23 Pontes MG. Mães órfãs: produzindo novos olhares a partir de modos de existência e resistência singulares [dissertação]. Belo Horizonte: Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; 2019.. In BH, between 2016 and 2018, the movement Whose Baby Is This³³33 Karmaluk C, Lansky S, Parizzi M, Batista G. "De quem é esse bebê?: movimento social de proteção do direito de mães e bebês juntos, com vida digna! Saúde em Redes 2018; 4(Supl. 1):169-189.. It involved SUS BH workers, the Municipal Health Council, the Regional Councils of Social Work and Psychology, the Mental Health Forum, the Street Population Forum, the Public Defender’s Office, and health and law groups from UFMG, among others, and mobilized sensibilities, affectations, and knowledge that triggered creative actions of resistance.

In summary, the production of further caring offers for people in situations of vulnerability, whether institutional or not, have been constituted as spaces of resistance to the effects of necro/biopolitics. Pelbart¹⁴14 Pelbart PP. O avesso do niilismo: cartografias do esgotamento. São Paulo: n-1 edições; 2013. reiterates that the subjectivity of someone in revolt is also the product of external forces that contribute to possible movements. Actions by workers, managers, and civil society in the sense of trying to produce a network and health care are examples of this perception, emerging as hope to these citizens who feel abandoned by the government. They are care projects built in a shared way, from offers that talk to the desires and potentials of women, opening the way to re-significations of their ways of being in the world.

The link produced from the unique experiences of mothers and the actions of social movements shows the power of human subjectivity in the face of arbitrariness. In practice, the challenges that involve the exercise of motherhood in Brazil are aligned to the adversities arising from the socio-historical context in which the country is inserted. To reflect on the discriminatory processes that involve maternity is also to delve into efforts to seek an understanding of the complexity of the production of the Brazilian social field. It is to seek a necessary restlessness to modify what persists from the past, in terms of segregation and social exclusion.

Conclusion

The defense of life for all constitutes a cornerstone principle for the implementation of caring and connection, promoting acts that expand the potency of women’s lives, including the possibility of living together with their children. Indigenous, black, and poor women are more exposed to state actions and judgments from society, which can lead to the removal of their children. In Brazil, the possibilities of experiencing maternity are not the same for all women.

An ideal of maternity that is far from the life possibilities of most Brazilian women, which is not even demanded with the same intensity from women of other social extractions; the criminalization of poverty, racial and gender discrimination, along with attempts to silence voices that expose violations of rights, they all constitute a picture that calls for resistance to face the intolerable.

That said, the defense of the right to rebuild vulnerable lives includes the right to maternity. It should also include sexual and reproductive autonomy and the need to overcome oppressions that are reflected in the concept of mother, a globalized category marked by power relations that condition and limit possibilities of life and ways of relating.

In this debate, it is important to highlight the feminist struggles, which propose confrontations with the adversities that accompany the possibilities of being a woman and a mother - poor, black, indigenous, or in various situations of vulnerability in Brazil - and often solo mothers, even when inserted into the labor market. This is a complex agenda, which involves efforts towards a society capable of lifting the fuzzy, threatening tone currently exposed by the readings of biopolitics in Brazil.

In this path, the performance of social movements continues to be essential to bring voice to the events of these women’s lives and create collective mechanisms to shrug off old hygienic actions. Furthermore, it is crucial to produce social protection policies that safeguard different ways of existing. To deny ways of producing life is tantamount to the denial of the right to exist. Overcoming this sort of arbitrariness involves a collective commitment to the lives of all and to the production of more solidary ways of producing the world.

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