O “projeto árvore seca” e a luta pela efetivação do direito à esterilização voluntária em mulheres sem filhos: entre mudanças legislativas, representações e estratégias de ação

Abstract

Sterilization, a definitive contraceptive method, is regulated in the Family Planning Law (Lei do Planejamento Familiar nº 9.263/1996). However, despite legal provision, woman encounter numerous difficulties to carrying out this surgery. This work, of ethnographic nature, has as objective to understand the struggle for effective access to the reproductive rights of childless females who seek to carry out voluntary sterilization. For this purpose, this work seeks to describe and analyze the different processes for conducting the tubal ligation procedure, what difficulties are found and the utilized strategies for obtaining it in the public and private health services, and what are the patient’s understanding of the procedure, by narrated accounts of experiences in a group located in the cyberspace. The normative text is, here, strategically utilized for the implementation of these woman reproductive rights, who share diverse information with one another. Still, the obstacles for the surgery are perceived, by them, as an undue mismanagement to their body’s freedom, which also relates with the perception of their own identities as a woman. This comprehension, still, pervades the notion of how the estate controls, regulates, or apprehends the autonomy of the woman’s will and how this relates with the representation of maternity and non-maternity in Brazilian culture.