State conflicts in the parliamentary commissions of inquiry on “family planning”: sterilization, national sovereignty, northeast and female bodies

Abstract

The legal regulation of surgical sterilizations, beyond representing the defense of sexual and reproductive rights, was based under the protection of other guidelines. Understanding them and analyzing the State conflicts that preceded the elaboration of the Family Planning Law, specifically the debates about surgical sterilizations, is the objective of this article. To do so, I use Foucauldian studies and State anthropology as theoretical references. Through an ethnography of documents, I also analyze the final reports and testimonies of two Parliamentary Inquiry Commissions (carried out between 1983 and 1992) that preceded the legislative process and at times problematized the need to implement family planning in the country, at others critiquing the excess of surgical sterilizations performed on Brazilian women. The partial results of the research point to an arena of conflicts based on different and sometimes antagonistic interests such as birth control, restriction of the number of sterilization as a way of defending national sovereignty, respect for women’s reproductive freedom and condemnation of tubal ligations. Likewise, power relations of sex, gender, race, class, territory, and sexuality are presented as a fundamental part of the debate around the elaboration of the Family Planning Law.