From the center to the margin

girls victims of sexual violence and legal abortion in Brazil

Abstract

This article aims to critically analyze the ways in which the State is continuously experienced and performed
through the (il)legibility of its own actions, documents, and discourses directed toward the protection of girls
who are victims of sexual violence. It adopts a qualitative approach, inspired by the ethnographic analysis
of official documents related to public policies for the protection of childhood (specifically girls), as well as
policies ensuring access to legal abortion in cases of sexual violence. The study centers on the emblematic
case of an 11-year-old girl from the state of Piauí who was prevented from accessing a legal abortion. The fin-
dings reveal that the State oscillates between the role of guarantor of codified rights and the practical denial
of those rights, exposing a scenario of institutional discontinuity and lack of protection, in which biopower
is exercised through the control of bodies, and the opacity of the State hinders access to reproductive justi-
ce. The article concludes that the State wavers within its formal commitment to comprehensive protection,
revealing that it is not a homogeneous or neutral entity but rather a construct permeated by moral disputes,
power relations, and ideologies. In this context, girls who are victims of sexual violence occupy an unstab-
le and frequently marginalized position, experiencing intersectional harm due to the overlapping of social
markers such as gender, age, race, and class—oscillating at times at the center, and at others at the margins
of state action.