Voluntary relinquishment: Moralities and hierarchization of rights in legal-legislative initiatives in Brazil

We examine the legal and legislative initiatives concerning the relinquishment of children for adoption currently being implemented in Brazil. Voluntary Relinquishment is a right guaranteed to pregnant individuals under Law 13.509/2017. Our analysis focuses on State-sponsored efforts to promote this practice, particularly state and municipal laws mandating informational signage in healthcare settings, as well as programs and campaigns spearheaded by the Judiciary. These initiatives generate moral regimes grounded in representations of ‘dangerous’ or ‘abandoning’ mothers, abortion, and infanticide, which are used to justify and intensify the regulation of motherhood. We link this process to a new pedagogy of family institutions as a State policy, one that prioritizes the relinquishment of children for adoption and enacts a specific hierarchy of rights between children and women (or gestating persons). The emphasis on child protection policy ultimately overrides reproductive rights and eclipses the broader, revitalized debate on reproductive justice.