The situation about women’s rights it’s a sensitive issue when it’s talking about human rights. More difficult its find a way to protect these rights. Aware of this problem, the aims is to analyze the women’s rights in the Brazilian context, mainly, the reproductive rights. So, to achieve this purpose, this paper through the combination of Law, Philosophy, and Literature tries to rethinking why women can’t have a voice when the decisions about their rights are taken. Methodologically, it was used as an interdisciplinary bibliographical revision between Law, Philosophy, and Literature. From Literature it brings the contributions from the life-narratives as an instrument to promote human rights. Besides the life-narratives theory, it’s also used the novel The Handmaid’s tale from Margaret Atwood, which became a symbol to reflect about reproductive rights. From Philosophy, it’s adopted the concepts of Homo sacer and state of exception developed by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben. The contributions of these different researches fields made possible to conclude that women are Homo sacer because governments ignore their voices and opinions when they talk about abortion. The control of the human body, mainly, women bodies it’s more important than preserving some fundamental rights and because of this, it’s so difficult to preserve and promote the human rights. Based on these conclusions, it is understood that when the state is incapable or does not want to guarantee the adequate protection of human rights, it is up to society through its various means to find ways to protect them.

Luana Mathias Souto is Ph.D. Law student at Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais. Lawyer. CAPES scholarship.

José Adércio Leite Sampaio is Post Doctor Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. Doctor in Constitutional Law at UFMG. Professor at Escola Superior Dom Helder Câmara and Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais. General Attorney at Minas Gerais.
Email: joseadercio@terra.com.br

This paper is part of my doctoral research on gender and state of exception developed at Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais with the support of CAPES Brazil.