Keywords

Why Italy Is an Interesting Case

Gestational surrogacy in Italy is prohibited: Law 40 of 2004 on assisted reproduction provides from 3 months to 2 years of reclusion and a €600,000–€1,000,000 fine for those who realize, organize, or advertise the trade of embryos and gametes as well as surrogate motherhood. Despite this prohibition, Italian heterosexual and homosexual couples go to foreign countries such as to Ukraine, Russia, Greece, the United States, and India (prior to the restrictive policy introduced in 2016 by the Indian Government), to become parents through surrogacy (Osservatorio sul turismo procreativo, 2012). Currently, there are no data available on how many children per year are born through surrogacy abroad for Italian clients. However, it is estimated that every year 100 Italian womenFootnote 1 use surrogacy abroad to have babies (because hindered by medical issues to carry out pregnancy) and the demand of surrogacy services abroad from Italian citizens is increasing (Osservatorio sul turismo procreativo, 2012). Although Italy seems to comply with the prohibition of undergoing surrogacy within national borders, some judgments and verdicts that recognize couples’, including same-sex ones, parental status on children born to surrogate mothers abroad on the principle of the best interest of the child, could signal a growing acceptance of the practice.Footnote 2

In the debate on Law 40 which started in the 2000s, surrogacy was only marginal: despite pro-life groups in 2013 having promoted a committee to reaffirm that there can be only one mother, surrogacy hit the headlines and reached widespread public opinion not before 2015, during a fiery debate around the reform of family, gay marriage, and stepchild adoption.

Italy is an interesting case for a study on surrogacy politics for the following context-specific aspects: for Italian couples surrogacy is a reproductive option only if they are available to go abroad and behave in a legal limbo; the debate on surrogacy is primarily contextualized within the debate on homoparenting; feminists, pro-lifers, and pro-family groups mobilize for the universal ban of surrogacy as well as for the enforcement of national prohibition; the civil battle against surrogacy is played primarily on the cases of the recognition of parental rights over children born from surrogacy abroad.

I will start this chapter by telling how I conducted the research in Italy. Afterwards, I will report the findings of a media analysis. Then, I will give accounts of the debate that developed around Law 40, which I think is necessary to better contextualize the following debate and mobilization on surrogacy, which will be the focus of the following section. At this point, I will turn to the frames and demands of both the abolitionist and regulatory fronts. In conclusion, I will summarize the characteristics that differentiate the Italian case from other two.

The Research Journey in Italy

As discussed in Chap. 2, the whole idea of this study stems from, and is influenced by the observation of how Italian civil society since 2015 has shown more interested in what was becoming a hot topic in the political debate regarding the family. In the summer of 2017, I started to reach out to those feminists who were taking a public position: I attended two public conferences and I conducted 8 in-depth telephone interviews with women belonging to or associated with Italian feminist groups and analysed texts disseminated by feminist movements and opinion leaders on their websites, magazines, and through the media. I also interviewed 3 men belonging to the Italian pro-life movement which is engaged in calling for an international abolition.

Once I started to work on the WoMoGeS project, I organized a kick-off meeting at my University LUMSA where I invited activists, journalists, institutional representatives, and experts with different positions on the topic: participation was marked by the absence of activists in favour of surrogacy and institutional representatives. Another important event for networking was the conference I organized at LUMSA in April 2019, where the international guest speaker was Jennifer Lahl, founder of the Stop Surrogacy Now campaign.Footnote 3 In spring 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown I started the actual investigation for the WoMoGeS Italian case. As in the other cases, the first activity was the analysis of the press coverage. I performed a keyword search “maternità surrogata” (surrogate motherhood) through the UniNexis database on the main national newspaper Corriere della Sera. Out of 193 articles, from 2009 to May 2020, 139 had been published since 2016, the year with highest number of articles (73): as previously mentioned, in that year surrogacy came to the forefront of public discussions during a fiery political clash over the approval of the law on civil unions, which was passed in May of that year.

I did a thematic analysis on 20 articles published in 2018 and 2019. I coded and read each of the 20 articles by looking at the following themes: topic of the article; countries where the story is situated; reported sources (e.g. politicians, activists, intended parents, etc.); whether surrogacy is contextualized as a reproductive practice for homosexual or heterosexual couples; description of surrogacy, intended parents, surrogates, and the children; description of the surrogate–foetus bond and relationship between the intended parents and the surrogates. These themes are the same as those applied in the press analysis for the United States and Mexico cases. One more theme, dedicated to the judiciary, political, and administrative bodies mentioned in the articles, was added to reflect the specific characteristics of the Italian press coverage, which pivots around litigations on the registering the birth of children born abroad through surrogacy.

From May to July 2020, I conducted 11 interviews either over the telephone or on online platforms. Interviewees were selected among my existing network, which was built since my earliest engagement in surrogacy research in Italy. The majority of interviewees that I was able to reach are opponents of surrogacy: 1 gay activist, 2 feminist bloggers/journalists, 2 feminist activists, 2 pro-life activists, 1 bioethics expert, 1 academic; only 2 interviewees are representative of the regulatory front (1 bioethicist and 1 advocate for civil rights). I made several attempts to engage with additional potential participants who do not belong to the abolitionist front, but this attempt resulted in no replies or rejections to participate. I filled this gap by including in the framing analysis not only the 11 interviews scripts but also 20 additional texts such as op-eds, law proposals, calls for actions, and appeals. In addition, I used knowledge and data acquired during my earlier exploration of the topic in 2017.

Surrogacy in the Press: The Children Born Abroad and the Domestic Debate

From the analysis of selected press coverage, it appeared clear that surrogacy in Italian public/media discourse is approached primarily in the context of homoparenting Although the majority of couples resorting to surrogacy internationally are heterosexual, discussions on surrogacy in Italy tend to intertwine with those on homoparenting and are influenced by a media portrayal of surrogacy as a method for gay men to have babies. Several articles address the complex questions on the civil registration of children born abroad from surrogacy and recognition of the parental status of couples once arrived in Italy. Denied recognition of parental status to same-sex couples and subsequent Court cases are recurring topics in the news.

In the articles analysed, space is also given to the debate on surrogacy and the opposition of instances. The case of pro-life posters in Rome removed because they are considered homophobic is news; the opposition of the women of the Partito Democratico (PD) for the appointment of a man in favour of surrogacy as head of the civil rights department of the party; the divergence on the subject within Arcilesbica (the major organization of lesbian women in Italy) is also news. The sources that are voiced are various: parents, feminist activists, civil rights activists, bioethicists, lawyers, politicians, ministers, and mayors.

Surrogacy is described as a reproductive practice which is illegal in Italy, while allowed in foreign countries such as Canada and the United States, where aspiring parents are forced to turn as the only way to have children and start a family to crown their stable unions. It is acclaimed by some as a form of civil right which is denied in Italy and condemned by others as a form of scheduled merchandise with a contract and commodification of women and children.

Law 40: A Slippery Ground for Feminists

For the debate on surrogacy to be placed correctly, it is necessary to mention what happened during the drafting of Law 40 of 2004 on medically assisted reproduction and the following referendum, since it is precisely in that piece of legislation that surrogacy finds its explicit prohibition, still in force in Italy. Law 40 also bans heterologous fertilization, limits the use of these techniques to heterosexual couples of childbearing age and proven sterility or infertility, limits the maximum number of embryos that can be implanted to three, and forbids to freeze embryos and carry out scientific research on them (Fineschi et al., 2005). The law, requested and pursued since the second half of the 1990s to regulate a field in which biomedical progresses could result in normative uncertainty, ended up being the subject of a long battle between political parties and the civil society, culminating in 2005 with the call for a referendum promoted by the secular segment of society (defending science as a means of affirming the right to be parents), defeated by the Catholic front (which encouraged abstention in defence of the human rights of the embryo (De Marco, 2011)). However, some of the prohibitions imposed by this law, such as cryopreservation and heterologous insemination, have been circumvented by jurisprudence over the years.

The debate on Law 40 and its referendum focused on the criteria for eligibility to assisted reproduction, the protection of the rights of the persons involved, the risks related to medical practices, and the meaning of human life in the embryonic phase (De Marco, 2011). Feminists were divided: while some, in the name of women’s freedom to have children through new technologies and heterologous fertilization, including outside of a heterosexual relationship, supported the abolition of a law considered too restrictive; others opposed the revocatory referendum, aiming at defending the naturalness of procreation from the domination of biomedical technology that, under more liberal laws, would eventually reduce women to reproductive machines by controlling their production capacity and denying their dignity. This divergence was oversimplified into a sexual dichotomy between men-defenders-of-the-law and women who “hate embryos and foetuses”. The women who choose the latter side of the debate found themselves labelled by their very “comrades-in-arms” as obscurantists and “priests-lovers”, due to the widespread fear that defending the statutory restrictions laid down by Law 40 could provide the discursive basis for further political initiatives aimed at chipping away at the legal achievements in the field of abortion (Di Pietro & Tavella, 2006).

The new focus of the debate on surrogacy is today causing some of the feminists opposed to this practice to rethink their positions, previously in favour of the technicalization of conception and in particular to heterologous fertilization; others, instead, are opposed to surrogacy but continue to accept heterologous fertilization as it does not question the unity and coherence of the figure of the mother coinciding with the woman who physically gives birth. In this regard, it is interesting to note that part of the Italian lesbian movement strongly opposes surrogacy, due to the necessary preservation of the child–mother relationship established during pregnancy. This is an extract from their appeal launched in 2016: “Babies born under contract are programmed to be separated from their mothers at birth, not for reasons of force majeure such as when the mother dies or decides not to recognise them, causing them to be put up for adoption, but in a predetermined way, taking away their optimal source of nourishment and interrupting their privileged relationship with the woman who gave birth to them, which is also a source of reassurance”.Footnote 4 Because of their anti-surrogacy positions lesbians have been accused of “ideological involution” and excluded from the Italian LGBTQ movement (Gramolini, 2019).

The Mobilization against Surrogacy in Italy: Initiatives and Frames

Surrogacy began to be a topic of public debate in 2015–16 in the context of the inflamed debate around the family reform that would have regulated same-sex marriage and stepchild adoption. At that time, the media were giving a great deal of visibility to the case of Nichi Vendola, a leftist politician and advocate for gay rights, who with his male partner had a child through surrogacy in Canada. Conservative groups linked to Catholic civil society and the Church (such as pro-life and pro-family advocates) and part of the feminist movement claimed that the legalization of stepchild adoption would have indirectly legitimized and encouraged the use of surrogacy in other countries. On this supposed link, it is worth mentioning that recently in 2019, Monica Cirinnà, the member of parliament who had been since 2015 the main supporter of the introduction of stepchild adoption is also one of the supporters of a recent law proposal aimed at legalizing surrogacy for all, with no discrimination based on sex-orientation. This Bill is proposed by the association for freedom in research Luca Coscioni, and radical organization for civil rights Certi Diritti, and was presented in a public conference held at the labour union Confederazione Italiana Generale del Lavoro (CGIL).

A women’s movement in Italy, led by the feminist group Senonoraquando-Libere (Snoq-L) (if not now when—free), started to call for a universal ban of surrogacy on 5th December 2015. Snoq-L was born in 2013 from split of a feminist group (called Senonoraquando) which was established in 2011 for completely different purpose, namely, to protest the widespread sexism in institutions and political culture, and who then took first place in the campaign against femicide.

Snoq-L embraces surrogacy as its main theme of mobilization in a wider framework of reflection on women’s freedom and motherhood. “The risk is that we adapt to a current idea of freedom which is an instrumental use of oneself. I belong to the generation that fought to claim their desire and autonomy but I didn’t do it to be able to sell myself on the market” are the words of a leader of the group. Snoq-L launched an appeal to the European Union to ban surrogacy because for women it represents a retreat in the path of freedom conquered over the years: “We cannot accept, just because technology makes it possible, and in the name of alleged individual rights, that women return to being objects available: no longer of the patriarch but of the market. We want surrogacy to be banned” reads the appeal.Footnote 5 According to feminist abolitionists on the reproductive market, women do not enjoy full freedom: neither freedom from need (since it is assumed that having real job opportunities and earnings women would not participate in this market); nor freedom to choose consciously based on risk assessment and ethical implications; not even freedom to decide what will happen to their body while providing the service (e.g. having the final say if the clients want an abortion). These are the words of another feminist in the abolitionist front:“Think of the illiterate women forced by their husbands or mothers-in-law who do not understand what surrogacy involves, who try to escape and go mad when they understand that they have to part with the newborn. Very few of them have the awareness required to see it as a form of emancipation. And is this worth the pain of a whole host of them? How I wish there were other ways of emancipation, I think it is terrible that there are no other ways for some women than to become prostitutes or sell their children”.

The Italian feminists do not mobilize alone: since the start in 2015, they adhered to the Stop Surrogacy Now campaign and followed the mobilization underway in France: French feminists led by Sylviane Agacinski and Collectif pour le Respect de la Personne (CORP) on 2nd February 2016 organized an assembly in the French Parliament to request an international convention for the total abolition (Paris Charter) together with other two organizations CADAC (Coordination pour le Droit à l’Avortement et à la Contraception) and CLF (Coordination Lesbienne en France). The Paris event was attended by some Italian feminists who the following year organized a similar initiative: an international meeting in Rome of 23rd March 2017 called “Moherhood at the crossroads: from free choice to surrogacy. A global challenge”. The meeting resulted in a recommendation to Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discriminations against Women (CEDAW) in which the signatories call for banning surrogacy as a violation of women’s dignity and human rights.

This major event was the trigger for Italian feminists to form a network and together they organized several initiatives to raise awareness on the need to oppose the spread throughout the world and any legalization attempts of surrogacy. Among the groups in the network, in addition to Snoq-L, there is also a new feminist group arising from the initiative of feminist blogger Marina Terragni in 2015 with the precise purpose of opposing surrogacy and called Resistenza all’utero in affitto (RUA) (Resistance to womb for rent). Other feminist participants are: part of Arcilesbica, Unione Donne Italiane (UDI), one of the oldest feminist associations in the country, Resistenza Femminista, a feminist group against prostitution and pornography, and RadFem, feminists opposing prostitution, biomarkets, and erasure of sexual difference.

Interestingly, as in the transnational abolitionist campaign, also in Italy surrogacy abolitionists include some gay activists who dissociate from LGBTQ dominant pro-surrogacy position. This is how one of these exponents explains his opposition to surrogacy: “I am against it because no adult, neither single, nor heterosexual or homosexual couple, can sign a preventive contract to sell or buy a child. This is also confirmed by European and world international charters, which prohibit the sale of people’s parts to third parties. Why do two men have to use a woman, even if she agrees, it doesn’t matter? There is something unspoken in the homosexual community that I think is serious: there is a delusion of omnipotence whereby in order to have a child genetically for one of the two partners, one uses the body of a woman. If gratuitousness existed, the theme would remain the same: there is no adult who has the possibility of giving a child to others and cancelling the mother. The theme of the mother being culled, whether pregnant or biological, questions why it is necessary to do so”.

In September 2016, a group of lesbians led by activist and sociologist Daniela Danna launched a position paper against surrogacy in which they asked States to reaffirm the mater semper certa est principle, to protect children from commodification, and thus to oppose all attempts of legalization: “In the name of women’s self-determination and the rights of babies, we, the signatories of the declaration: reject the commercialization of women’s reproductive capacities; reject the commodification of children; ask all countries to maintain the rule of elementary common sense according to which the legal mother is the one who gave birth and not the signatory of a contract or the origin of the oocyte; we ask all countries to respect the international conventions for the protection of human and child rights of which they are signatories and to firmly oppose all forms of legalization of surrogacy on a national and a international level, abolishing the (few) laws that they have introduced”.Footnote 6

The conference in Rome was followed by numerous anti-surrogacy initiatives. One of these was an investigative video report published in July 2016 by feminist journalist Monica Ricci Sargentini, sympathizer of the prohibitionist front, on the main Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera: the reportage revealed how a Californian agency advertised surrogacy to potential clients at a hotel in Rome, an activity that is explicitly prohibited by Law 40. Following the reportage, the public prosecutor opened an investigation. In 2016, one of the most renowned feminists and philosopher Luisa Muraro published a small book entitled L’anima del Corpo. Contro l’utero in affitto (Muraro, 2016): Muraro, in contrast to the assumption that women’s bodies are available, exalts the special bond between mother and child. In the same year feminist blogger and coordinator of RUA Marina Terragni published Temporary Mother. Utero in affitto e mercato dei figli (Terragni, 2016) in which she frames surrogacy as a market that exploits women and deletes the mother from a new-patriarchal regime, and in doing so it satisfies the historical male envy of women’s reproductive power. In 2017, Snoq-L’s leader and academic Francesca Izzo published a book entitled Maternità e Libertà (Izzo, 2017) in which she reflects on the epochal shift in the significance of motherhood and freedom.

In 2017, the feminist network promoted a survey which revealed that 71% of Italians would like that surrogacy remained illegal. The survey was conducted on a sample of 800 adults: 48% was unconditionally against a possible legalization, 23% was favourable to altruist surrogacy only.

In 2018, Italian feminist groups joined the appeal launched by the international coalition ICASM asking candidates running for the 2019 European Parliament elections to engage in the battle for a total abolition of surrogacy.

In 2019, the feminist network convinced, through hearings, the Mayor of Milan to stop transcribing birth certificates with two dads. The network demand was (and is) one of transcribing only the biological parent while the partner should go through the process of special adoption (adozione in casi particolari). Later, this position has been also confirmed by the Supreme Court (Cassazione, Sezioni Unite).

To celebrate the International Day against VAW on 25th November 2019, the Equal Opportunity office of the City Council of Rome held a public conference on surrogacy where representatives of Snoq-L spoke. This event, despite its local scope, is worth mentioning insofar it acknowledges surrogacy as a form of VAW.

In 2020, Snoq-L launched a petition to the Italian left-wing parties (which were ruling the government) inviting them to take a united and clear position against surrogacy as undertaken by the Spanish left-wing parties (de Aguirre, 2019) that recently included in their governmental agenda the support to abolition of surrogacy.

Finally, there is the Kiev case which I dedicated the introduction of this book: during the COVID-19 lockdown the feminist network asked the Italian Ambassador in Ukraine to reject any permit that Italian commissioning parents could have asked for to travel and pick up their babies and ensure that custody of the babies commissioned by Italian citizens be assigned to their surrogates or alternatively to adoptive parents. In July 2020, on the wave of the Kiev case, the Deputy President of the House of Representatives (former Minister to Equal Opportunity) Mara Carfagna, presented a law proposal to render surrogacy a prosecutable crime abroad. A Snoq-L’s activist underlines that Law 40 is not to be reformed but rather to be enforced, case by case, through the following discouraging mechanisms as part of a coherent administrative and institutional response: consulates should inform judiciary authorities in Italy about irregular entries and suspects of surrogacy; only the biological parent can be transcribed in Italian civil registries, while the other parent should go through special adoption process (adozione in casi particolari) which implies family assessments by the Children Court (Tribunale per i Minori); the name of the surrogate should be transcribed in civil registries; surrogacy should be included in the list of crimes that are prosecutable abroad (as for sexual tourism); bilateral agreements between countries should be signed; an observatory on illicit publicity of surrogacy should be established at the Ministry of Interiors; foreign agencies that advertise surrogacy in Italy should be prosecuted.

According to feminist abolitionists the problems (diagnostic frames) with surrogacy are the following:

  • surrogacy commodifies women and children’s bodies: it reduces women to reproductive machines, pregnancy to a job, and children to objects/products

  • surrogacy is a form of VAW

  • surrogacy deprives women of freedom during pregnancy

  • surrogacy exploits vulnerable women who are already subjugated by economic needs and family pressures; surrogacy also takes advantage from women’s altruistic inclination and from the mystique of motherhood

  • surrogacy is an expression of patriarchal envy towards female reproductive ability

  • surrogacy is dangerous for women and children’s health and deprives children of their identity

  • surrogacy impedes the relationship between the mother and the newborn, as well as family continuity

  • surrogacy is a form of market invasion in human life

  • surrogacy increases global inequality

  • surrogacy is a form of appropriation of female identity (which builds on her capacity of giving birth); the so-called gender feminism approves this appropriation

  • surrogacy is legitimized in the name of an assumed right to offspring and a culture of individual limitless rights which is encouraged by left-wing politics

  • surrogacy is presented through edulcorated media coverage of celebrities having babies and narratives of individual autonomy

  • surrogacy is encouraged by low control/enforcement of the Law 40: automatic transcription by Italian authorities of foreign birth certificates, lack of coordination between Italian authorities abroad, foreign countries and Italian civil registries, non-criminalization of Italian citizens having babies through surrogacy abroad, are all conditions that contribute to increasing the use of surrogacy abroad.

The solutions or the envisioned cures (prognostic frames) according to Italian feminist abolitionists are the following:

  • universal ban of surrogacy to be achieved through UN and EU declarations (as for the international condemnation of slavery and female genital mutilations)

  • application of international agreements such as: the European Charter of Fundament Rights, the CEDAW, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Slavery Convention, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, the Council of Europe Convention on the Adoption of Children, the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, the Council of Europe Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine

  • case by case enforcement of Law 40 through coherent administrative and institutional response involving consulates and judiciary authorities in Italy

  • the name of the surrogate should be transcribed in civil registries

  • surrogacy should be included in the list of crimes that are prosecutable abroad (as for sexual tourism)

  • an observatory on illicit publicity of surrogacy should be established at the Ministry of Interiors

  • foreign agencies that advertise surrogacy in Italy should be prosecuted.

  • simplification of adoption process, which should also be open to same-sex couples

  • lobbying on international organizations to contrast the influence of infertility industry

  • reaffirmation of the mater semper certa est principle (the mother is the one who gives birth)

  • coalitions and coordination within feminism should be strengthened

  • left-wing parties should take a unitary position against surrogacy

  • sensitization of public opinion on implications and risks of surrogacy

  • principles of human dignity and integrity of non-usable bodies should be reaffirmed, the belief in limitless rights and genderless culture should be contrasted.

Parallel to the feminist mobilizations, politicians from the conservative area and Catholic pro-life and family activists have also been very active in recent years in countering the spread and attempts to legalize surrogacy. Among the main initiatives, the pro-family organization Generazione Famiglia (Italian branch of French La Manif Pour Tous) launched an appeal asking the Council of Europe for the total ban of surrogacy and on 2nd February 2016 Provita NGO convened a press conference at the Senate where it was invited as the main speaker Elisa Anna Gomez, American surrogate who conducted a long legal battle to obtain permission to see the child she had gestated for a same-sex couple (Gomez died in 2016 under unclear circumstances). Also, some Parliamentarians in the Christian-democratic area proposed to extend the prohibition of surrogacy provided by Law 40 to cases of Italian citizens using surrogacy abroad and returning to Italy with children. Surrogacy was also a topic of political debate during the 2018 Parliamentarian election campaign insofar the defence of traditional family was one of the main points of the right-wing parties agenda. At that time Provita and Generazione Famiglia (now merged into one NGO) organized a visual communication campaign, with Billboards in Rome, Milan, and Turin, to sensitize public opinion against surrogacy. The Mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi claimed that one of the Billboards that was showing two men carrying a baby inside a shopping cart was homophobic and against children’s dignity, and thus ordered the immediate removal and a fine for the organizers; however, the advertisement authority (Gran Giurì dell’Istituto di Autodisciplina Pubblicitaria) soon after ascertained that the Billboard was regular and not offensive. In February 2019, several Senators of the right party Lega presented a law proposal to embitter the penalty already provided by Law 40 and to explicitly forbid the registration of children with two male or female parents.

Although feminists and Catholics are willing to discuss surrogacy, they do not organize joint initiatives and they remark that they are not allied. Such firmness in maintaining distances derives from different views on family, women’s emancipation and gender roles in modern society, and especially due to divergent views on abortion. Pro-life and pro-family organizations base their strong opposition to surrogacy on different premises than those of feminists. While feminists view surrogacy as an expression of the patriarchal culture and male-dominated biotechnology, pro-life activists see surrogacy as an advanced form of disruption of the natural order, and as a violation of the child’s right to be conceived and brought into life by his own parents (Vitale, 2017). Despite these different underpinnings, the frame of women and maternity commodification, which is primarily a feminist frame, is applied by pro-life groups too (Giorgi, 2016); on the other hand, feminists speak not only about the commodification of children but also about commodification of life, which is the dominant frame of pro-life groups; motherhood, the mother–foetal bond and surrogates’ sufferance are exalted by both fronts; health risks for surrogates and children are also common topics of concerns for the two fronts. Even if these groups remain very distinct, feminists opposed to surrogacy, as in the debate on Law 40, are accused of having the same conservative positions as both the Church and the right. Not only that, they are also accused of homophobia for not allowing gay men to have the same parentage rights as lesbian women.Footnote 7

Feminism of Difference and the Non-abolitionist Front

Surrogacy is without doubt a divisive topic for feminism, both internationally and in Italy. Not all feminists in Italy agree with the abolitionist demand and outside the network who explicitly asks for the total ban, there are other feminists (such as those linked to the feminist magazine Leggendaria) who are more open to reflect on the possibility of allowing surrogacy, altruistic or even commercial. If in the other case studies, I have called this front reformist or regulatory, in the Italian case I do not think these names reflect their approach. This is why I prefer to simply call this front non-abolitionist. One of these feminists years ago told me “I would not call myself a reformist, but a feminist who rejects a binary logic”.

What I observed is that while opposition to surrogacy is visible, insofar it generates events and coalitions, to my knowledge in Italian feminism, there is no established and organized front that advocates for surrogacy legalization. I cannot even identify any feminist NGO engaged in reproductive rights, such as GIRE in Mexico, that offers policy makers with expert consultation on how to better regulate surrogacy. The regulatory demand comes from other civil society groups, such as same-sex families and civil rights organizations, which nevertheless get support from some feminist groups and individuals. These pro-surrogacy organizations build their demand on the principles of non-discrimination in becoming parents: the possibility to have babies should be freely pursued as inviolable rights to self-determinate one own’s personal life (by everyone, singles and couples of all sexual orientation), also through access to assisted reproductive technology. They recall that the European Court of Human Rights on 26th June 2014 ruled that the prohibition of surrogacy is a violation of children’s rights to family life and a violation of article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights to the respect of private life. The other core principle in the legalization demand is the autonomy of women in deciding whether to use their body to help others to have babies. The prohibition established by Law 40, according to these advocates, renders aspiring parents (and subsequently children born through surrogacy) more vulnerable to risks and legal incertitude insofar their only chance to have babies is going abroad (reproductive tourism).

Non-abolitionist feminists minimize the unprecedented significance of subrogation by interpreting it as a modern version of practices that have been always existed, such as children who were born from servants and raised by their masters, or cases of mothers who choose to give their newborn child away (for adoption). Moreover, they suggest considering surrogacy as a procreative practice in which the centrality and power of women can be reaffirmed, and as a possibility to redefine parentage. The freedom of women to decide whether to gestate their own or others’ embryos, and whether to become mothers of their own or others foetuses, should not be limited. Some reject the abolitionist demand because they hope that the practice can be regulated in such a way as to provide only reimbursement for expenses and greater protection for the subjects involved, and they want to be open in principle at the possibility that surrogacy can also be practiced outside the market, without any money transactions, between women of the same family or friendship network.

Others, on the other hand, consider opposition to payment as a moralistic position. I propose an exemplary excerpt of this position by an opinion maker who is favourable to legalization. “I’m still waiting a strong argument for the condemnation of commercial subrogation: shouting at the scandal that there is money is not a good argument, I do not do anything about this reason unless we prove that all trade is immoral and harmful”. Me: “this is about trade in human beings though. It is very different from the potato trade”. Interviewee: “It is not a trade in lives but in functions. It is also a huge debate related to the huge question of whether we can truly dispose of our body. We also have to choose what to do with our functions”.

The choice not to adhere to the abolitionist appeal also derives from an a priori rejection of any prohibitive approach to women’s agency, especially when this approach is based on a paternalistic representation of the woman-victim who does not know how to choose independently. The feminist sociologist Tamar Pitch in Leggendaria magazine writes about the punitive feminism on the basis of the demand for the universal abolition of surrogacy: “Today the self-assumption of the status of victim seems indispensable to be recognized as political protagonists and interlocutors. With an aggravating circumstance, compared to 20 years ago, that ‘our’ political subjectivity is built through the definition of ‘others’ as victims, with the consequence that ‘we’ speak and the ‘others’, the ‘victims’, they are spoken by ‘us’, and therefore reduced to silence. And if, as it happens, the others want to say something different, for example, by refusing the status of victims, one can always resort, perhaps giving it another name, to the old category of false conscience” (Pitch, 2017, p. 26).

Furthermore, there is a distancing from positions, such as the abolitionist one, which reaffirm the biological basis of female and maternal identity. In the words of an interviewee: “The ban responds to the logic of enhancing the biological data of the maternal dimension, when instead the new techniques of assisted reproduction have introduced a range of subjects within the practice”. Consider the following extract again from the feminist magazine Leggendaria. In the Snoq-L’s abolitionist appeal feminists Maria Luisa Boccia and Grazia Zuffa (Boccia & Zuffa, 2017) see an expression of “biological reductionism”, and invite to “re-signify the procreative, parenting and filiation relationships. Starting from the meaning, which has always been absent in the symbolic and social patriarchal order, of being born of a woman. It is ‘this fact’ that has not found a symbolic inscription, or an adequate representation. We are still born of a woman. The adverb indicates that technologies are unable to replace the sexed body, nor to dispose of the uterus, as a reproductive organ, separated from the woman. The question is whether this necessarily does with the woman who generates, the mother. We think not; not always and however. Today as in the past. Today differently from the past” (p. 10). Again, the two authors propose to speak of “female paternity” for the egg donor, understood as a “female father by analogy with the male experience, by reason of the ‘offer’ of the genetic patrimony” (p.11). The authors maintain that “the father is reduced from a symbolic figure to gametes and the paternal-patriarchal order of filiation to biological procreation” (p. 11).

This critique of the biologism of motherhood and female identity is highly interesting to understand the configuration of Italian feminism on the theme of surrogacy. Italian abolitionists can be traced back to difference feminism, a stream of feminism which highlights the uniqueness of female nature and the power of women’s reproductive capability. This stream, inspired by and developed in dialogue with French feminists, has been dominant in Italian Second Wave feminism. Difference feminists reject the constructivist approach to sex identity which is instead promoted with increasing visibility by the so-called gender feminists. The latter believe in the full self-determination of one’s own identity regardless of one’s biological sex: motherhood in this view is not a typical trait of the woman but it can be played by all genders (Cavarero, 1999; Greer, 1999). The following extract of a conversation with a feminist in the abolitionist front well explains the theoretical rationale for the opposition to surrogacy based on sex difference: “with surrogacy emerges the homologation of female freedom to that of the neutral element, built on male identity. We are reaching a decisive point in the internal confrontation of feminism: what is woman? If this battle is lost, the fundamental element of the initial feminist battle is lost”. These are the words of a feminist scholar: “Constructivism made us think that motherhood is a construct, as if female emancipation were freedom from a natural destiny. In Italy, there has been great resistance to gender feminism. The message that motherhood is a construction that dispossesses the person from his nature. Today there are two major rethinkings underway: on the concept that women’s emancipation occurs with the entry of the market, and the revision of the assumption that freedom means liberation from one’s own nature”.

The division between difference feminists and gender feminists is not only theoretical but is sometimes expressed also in terms of the conflict and polarization on the following issues: call for regulation/abolition of sex work, recognition/rejection of transgenders as women, and support/opposition to surrogacy. In Anglo-American social movements, feminists who frame sex work and reproductive work as neoliberal forms of exploitation of women’s body and defend the typicality of female sexual identity are labelled as Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism (Terf) and Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist (Swerf): these categories have also entered the Italian feminist scene as derogatory labels for surrogacy Italian abolitionists.Footnote 8

To sum up, according to non-abolitionist feminists, prohibition (and not surrogacy per se) represents a problem because:

  • it would endanger women’s self-determination and freedom to choose whether to use their pregnancy for others

  • it reaffirms biologism in the definition and meaning of motherhood (backlash of achieved freedom to be woman regardless the status of mother)

  • it is based on paternalistic views of women as victims who are incapable of making choices

  • abolition would open the door to criminal organizations

They think it is important to:

  • continue reflections and debate on surrogacy by avoiding moral categories, by collecting evidence and analysing legal frameworks of countries with permissive regulations

  • be open to redefining parentage and family models

  • reaffirm the concept that motherhood is a free choice and does not necessarily correspond to pregnancy

Conclusive Observations on the Unicity of the Italian Case

What is different in Italy from other case studies in the United States and Mexico is that in Italy the public debate on surrogacy arose from, and therefore it is marked by a strong opposition from feminists and Catholic groups. In Italy, in contrast to the other two cases, feminist abolitionists have a prominent role in rendering surrogacy a hot issue of discussions within institutions, the civil society and the media. While a universal ban and enforcement of existing prohibition are causes for feminists in Italy, legalization of surrogacy is not (yet). It seems that feminists who disagree with the call for abolition are more open to surrogacy in principle than in practice, as if they would not surrender to the fact that, faced with the scenarios opened by the combination of biomedical technology, globalization, and inequality, some limits to women’s freedom need to be established: abolitionists belonging to difference feminists set these limits in the female sexed identity and defend the centrality/power of the mother in humanity; feminists who do not agree with the surrogacy prohibition believe that women should be free to embrace new opportunities of emancipation (also from their own female identity) by using creatively their reproductive capacity.

It is worth noticing how surrogacy in Italy, unlike the other two case studies in the United States and Mexico, is prohibited and is not physically undergone within national borders; nevertheless, opposition is stronger and more active than in the other two case studies where surrogacy is at some level regulated and thus undergone by local women. Therefore, we can say that Italian feminists are engaging in a battle that presently does not closely pertain to the exploitation or commodification of women in Italy; it pertains to the commodification of women in other countries of the world, and more broadly to the theoretical notion of “the woman”, whose reproductive ability is devalued as an exploitable function. Opposition to surrogacy hinders the possibility that it is being legalized and it expands a form of reproductive work in Italy too, where an economic crisis is rampant.

Surrogacy mobilization in Italy is characterized by consolidated relationships between activists in the civil society and politicians in the institutions and thus by engagement of politicians in surrogacy opposition (mainly through law proposals and public statements). Whereas the position of the right-wing parties is clearly against surrogacy and politicians in this area cooperate with pro-life and pro-family groups, on the other side, the position of the center-left parties, which in the last decade have strengthened their engagement in civil rights and gender equality, is not clear and homogeneous. This situation poses some identity problems to feminism, whose traditional political interlocutor has been the left-wing parties, and whose identity is that of a progressive movement.

Coalitions that transcend traditional ideological divisions and divergences on other social issues would render opposition stronger. In particular, feminists and conservative groups such as pro-life and pro-family could consider starting a single-issue alliance on surrogacy while maintaining their different views on abortion and family. Shared concerns about health and psychological risks for surrogates and children could be developed into a scientific-based argument for joint opposition to surrogacy. By the same token, feminists could consider the possibility of dialogue with political parties in the conservative area although they are traditionally perceived distant from feminist visions of women’s emancipation. This kind of openness could also offer the opportunity to modify pre-assumptions about “enemy’s” values and visions.

In light of this diffused and structured opposition to surrogacy, Italy might become a model of strict prohibition if policy proposals aimed at enforcing Law 40 (e.g. through case by case administrative response and prosecution of surrogacy undergone by Italian citizens abroad) are approved. On the other hand, it is unlikely that in the near future surrogacy will continue to be a hot topic in the Italian political debate: the Italian population will need to face heavy effects, in terms of economic crisis and reorganization of daily life and family, of anti COVID-19 polices (such as lockdown, social distancing, smart-working, distance-learning, and school closure). These are risk factors that may render Italian women the target of international recruitment of surrogates, a possibility that should be taken into consideration in policy making as well as in any reform or enforcement of Law 40.