Sacred Cells, Vanishing Women: Fetus Politics in Italian Reproductive Discourse
Giorgia Meloni's biography begins with the story of how her mother contemplated abortion during her pregnancy with Meloni. Her mother, Anna, decided not to enter the abortion clinic at the very last minute, after having all the documents for the procedure ready. However, Giorgia Meloni was born in January of 1977, before abortion was legal in Italy. Thus, what was narrated in the book is a blatant lie. This is the epitome of how the right-wing government in power in Italy exploits and weaponizes, mainly, lies for their populist narratives. This article aims to stress and explain how the narratives around foetus politics are aimed at narrowing the scope of access to abortion. Women’s (1) reproductive choices threaten Italy’s manifestation of biopolitics, along with its populist vitalist national narrative, part of the Italian vitapolitics.
The aura of prohibition that follows the practice of abortion does not derive from wanting to ban the practice being carried out, nor avoiding embryos or fetuses getting destroyed, but rather is derived from the will of impeding women’s freedom, thus avoiding letting them choose what to do with their bodies. Ensuring access to abortion would directly impede someone else from choosing for them. From this stems the construction that frames abortion as “an immoral act.” Primarily because it is always wrong to kill an innocent human being, portrayed as the weakest subject (i.e., the embryo or foetus). This cluster of cells is faced with death from a threatening force, i.e. women. These clusters grow inside increasingly see-through uteruses, visible through means that are the result of technological advancement, i.e. foetal visualization technologies like 3D or 4D sonograms and dopplers. This nourishes the narrative that sees foetuses and embryos as human beings, through the ‘natural’ framework used by pro-life actors. At the same time, these instances give these cells the same dignity as actual human beings, attributing ‘child-like’ characteristics to the foetus. Whilst technology actively erases the body of the woman, making the identity of maternity replace it.
Pro-life and Catholic actors rely on what they think is the “nature of the person of the embryo,” thus, through this lens, it is seen as natural to defend life from conception, not being based on scientific research. These principles are backed up by commandment number 5, “do not kill,” thus equating the interruption of pregnancy to the homicide of an adult. The mere attribution of personality to the foetus or the embryo is arbitrary, because it comes from the conventionality of the scientifically chosen difference between a cluster of cells and an embryo, and between the embryo and a foetus; because the differences between them are not embedded in them, but in the eye of whoever watches them. So, as Conti says, the embryology book pretends to discuss about embryos, however, it tackles the dynamic about embryologists and their microscopes. Accordingly, it would be possible to think of a future where technology has advanced to the point that a loophole will be found to elude passing through a female human body for birth to happen.
Correspondingly, carrying on pro-natalist interventions with the archetype of the traditional family, vitapolitical concerns are addressed through the acknowledgement and protection of the embryo. This is carried out mimicking the same linguistic repertoire used by women in the fight for bodily autonomy. Indeed, representatives of the current Italian government reiterated many times how they are not blatantly against abortion, however, they would support the formulation and safeguard of “right to not abort,” creating the right of the conceived, be it a foetus or embryo, comparing it with other categories of rights. Precisely, this is what happened in Italy 3 years before the introduction of the law aimed at decriminalising abortion, when the Corte Costituzionale (2) acknowledged that the abortion provision of the 1930 Italian Penal Code was unconstitutional. Furthermore, it stated that the Italian Constitution protects both the rights of the conceived, as well as those of the mother. However, in case of conflict between the two, it is necessary to balance them, concluding that the right of who is “already a person” prevails over the right of who “person has yet to become.”
In 1978 the Law 194 was inserted within the Italian legal framework, being the result of a long bargain among the Christian Democrats (DC) and the Communist Party, at the time the two biggest parties in Italy. Welcomed amid controversy coming from the women’s movement, Conti said that legge 194 is “a provision that actually prohibits abortion, except in certain circumstances; to be carried out compulsorily in a public facility, with 7 days of elapse from the moment in which the woman made her decision to abort known to her doctors." Pro-life actors exploited the provision to limit women’s access to abortion. The provision cites in its article 1, that the state guarantees the right to conscious and responsible procreation, acknowledging the social value of motherhood and the safeguard of human life from its beginning.
Haltering to a greater extent the possibility for women in Italy to be subject of interruption of pregnancy is in art. 9 of the provision, which lies down the legal basis for conscious objection, which exonerates medical personnel from carrying out procedures directly connected to terminating pregnancy; this personnel would still have to provide their services before and after the procedure (3). The percentage of conscious objectors in Italy, for the year 2022, is of 60,7%, however, in some regions this percentage is as high as 91%.
One of the first acts carried out by Meloni’s government in October 2022 was the draft law aimed at the recognition of the judicial capacity of the conceived, thus modifying the first article of the Italian civil code. Art. 1 of the Italian Civil Code provides that “Judicial capacity is acquired at birth. The rights that the law acknowledges for the conceived are subordinated to the event of birth.” The proposed modification would’ve changed it to “Every human being has judicial capacity since conception […].” All of these efforts are aimed at narrowing the scope of the right to abortion.
In 2023, Giulia Tramontano was killed in Milan. And if on one side this is just one of the many femicides happening in Italy (4), on the other side, Tramontano was 7 months pregnant when killed by her boyfriend, Alessandro Impagnatiello. Impagnatiello was accused of murder, aggravated by the factors of premeditation, sentimental bond, futile motives and cruelty; furthermore, he was accused of non-consensual interruption of pregnancy and concealment of the corpse. During the investigations, it emerged that Impagnatiello had been poisoning Tramontano for months. The lawyers representing Impagnatiello tried to stress that the only reason why he was poisoning Tramontano was to provoke a spontaneous abortion; those same lawyers implied that, similarly, the 37 stabs that killed her were not for the woman herself, but rather they were directed towards the foetus. Following this event that overwrought the public opinion in Italy, Senator Licia Ronzulli deposited a bill that would integrate the article of the Italian penal code that regulates the offence of homicide. As of now, the law requires the sentence to not be less than 21 years of detention, with the proposed bill, the offence of homicide of a pregnant woman would be introduced, where the years of reclusion would be not less than 30. Among the explanations given by the senator for the introduction of the provision is the lack of recognition of double homicide in the case of homicide of a pregnant woman, regardless of how long the gestation has been going on for. Thus, this falls in one of the ways through which the current Italian government, headed by right-wing forces, tries to achieve the recognition of the embryo or foetus as a person. Always with the final goal – even if not officially disclosed – of narrowing women’s possibility of access to abortion.
Riding the wave for the fight for the recognition of embryos as people, the Executive Director of the department of medical sciences and surgery of one the most important hospitals in Italy, Sergio Alfieri, reported that late Pope Francis in January 2025 asked him to take care of “abandoned embryos,” affirming that they «are life, we cannot allow for them to be used for experimentation or that they could be lost. It would be homicide». Thus, following this statement a proposal co-written by the Ministry of Family, Ministry of Health and Ministry of Justice emerged, the text is aimed at allowing the “adoption” of abandoned embryos (5), with the goal of «giving a chance at life to suspended lives». This bill hasn’t been discussed nor debated yet. However, as the lawyer Filomena Gallo (6) said, embryos cannot be adopted; only abandoned children can be adopted by law, not cells; and even if they were compared to human tissue, as such, they can only be donated, but they do not have any kind of judicial personality. Still, in Italy, they are buried as if they were actual human beings. In 2020, a controversy arose in Rome involving a cemetery known as the "Garden of Angels" where foetal remains were buried. The burial crosses displayed the names of women who had undergone abortions, creating a clear breach of privacy laws and legal protections for personal medical information. These operations are carried out because of the lack of administrative burden on the side of the hospitals where women go to have the procedure carried out. Thus, the disposal of these foetuses is handled by pro-life catholic organisations.
The Vatican creates a solid basis upon which right-wing parties can build their pro-life political platforms. Furthermore, these parties exploit these topics to institute and nurture relations with other actors within the right-wing panorama. In 1987, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under Pope Ratzinger, decided to set aside the narrative of immorality of abortion and contraception. This was replaced with the “biological certainty” of genetic heritage of the zygote that becomes the truth of its character as human beings, in its physical and spiritual entirety. In 2003, on the occasion of the Lexicon on Family, the Vatican set pen to paper the subordination of women to the demands of maternity; thus expressing the complete aversion to socio-constructivist approaches to gender, in terms of a scientific understanding of the “nature” of human bodies.
Lastly, the Italian government instrumentalises abortion, connecting it to the pipeline of demography, stressing that abortion itself is one of the reasons at the basis of the national demographic winter. Following their framing, it is the result of long fights for bodily autonomy, called ‘revolution of values,’ that results in the origin of individualism and nihilism. Further to their narrative, women are also blamed for the “ethnic substitution” from immigrants, which for them originates from abortion.
The research has identified several critical dimensions of Italy's contemporary abortion discourse. The deliberate construction of false narratives illustrates how populist movements manufacture emotional legitimacy for restrictive policies through lies. This finding underscores the centrality of narrative manipulation in contemporary biopolitical governance. Furthermore, the analysis reveals how technological advancement paradoxically serves regressive political ends. The strategic appropriation of rights discourse represents a particularly sophisticated form of political manoeuvring. By creating a "right not to abort" and advocating for embryonic "adoption," right-wing actors have successfully co-opted the linguistic framework of bodily autonomy movements. Finally, the transformation of religious moral positions into biological certainties illustrates how scientific language can be deployed to legitimise theological worldviews.
This analysis has revealed the intricate mechanisms through which contemporary Italian right-wing politics weaponise foetal personhood narratives to systematically constrain women's reproductive autonomy. The examination demonstrates how these narratives operate not merely as moral or religious positions but as sophisticated biopolitical instruments that serve broader populist and demographic agendas. Ultimately, I suggest that the struggle over reproductive rights in contemporary Italy represents a crucial battleground for the future of democratic governance itself. Understanding the mechanisms through which vitapolitical populism operates is therefore essential not only for defending reproductive freedom, but for preserving the conditions of possibility for genuine gendered and queer democratic participation.
Notes:
(1) For the purposes of this article, the term 'woman' will be used for simplicity. However, all arguments presented apply to any person who has a uterus and may experience pregnancy, childbirth, or abortion - regardless of their gender identity.
(2) Constitutional Court of Italy, the highest court in Italy invested with the role of safeguarding the correct application and respect of the constitution, among other things (Costituzione Italiana, 1947).
(3) This does not happen, the great majority of conscious objectors reject comprehensively any action and service that is remotely connected to the termination of the pregnancy, even denying emitting the certificate of pregnancy, needed to carry out the procedure in the first place.
(4) To the 8th May 2025 the total number of women killed in Italy in 2025 is 37 (Non Una Di Meno, 2025).
(5) These embryos are cryopreserved and are not being used by couples that resort to assisted insemination but found themselves in the circumstances of not using it anymore. These could also be residual embryos from successful inseminations. Couples can decide to donate them to other couples, donate them to scientific research or they can cease the conservation of these embryos. If the couple abandons them, the fertility clinic will decide what to do with it.
(6) The lawyer and national secretary of the Luca Coscioni Association for the freedom of scientific research.
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About the author:
Michela Rossettini is Co-Director of Outreach & Partnerships for Politics4Her's European Hub and a Master's student in International and Development Studies at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, specializing in Gender, Race and Diversity, currently on exchange at the Hertie School. A human rights advocate and researcher passionate about how technology impacts women, she contributes to the European Student Think Tank's Digital Policy Working Group, where she writes on technology-facilitated gender-based violence, and formerly served as Youth Representative to the UN Office in Geneva with the Centre for Voters Initiative & Action. Michela holds a Bachelor of Law from the University of Turin, where her dissertation examined cybercrime through a gendered lens, and is dedicated to amplifying young women's voices in political and decision-making spaces.
