MATERNITY, GENDER AND THE EFFECTIVENESS OF WOMEN’S HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE BRAZILIAN CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM: THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE CONVENTION AND THE CEDAW COMMITTEE

This paper seeks to understand motherhood as a relevant gender issue in shaping women’s human rights, taking the norms of protection against discrimination on grounds of pregnancy in Articles 11 and 12 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) as a starting point for affirming a fundamental right to obstetric care, seeking to understand it as an instrument to combat violence and discrimination against women in reproductive health, delimiting how this right has been interpreted and applied in the experience of higher courts in Brazil, confronting it with the constitutional predictions on women’s social rights and the legal frameworks of women’s reproductive health, and outlining how the decisions of the CEDAW committee in the cases Alyne Pimentel da Silva v. Brazil and Elizabeth de Blok et al. The Netherlands can contribute to broadening the protection and enforcement of this right in the judicial sphere.