Destiny, Duty, Self-Determination. Abortion in Twentieth-Century Italy

Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concerns about issues related to abortion grew considerably in Italy. The reproductive sphere shifted towards the public and political sphere. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was an explicit demand for direct state intervention, driven by nationalist demands. In the mid-1920s, the Fascist regime initiated a pronatalist policy that culminated – during the 1930s – in an unprecedented emphasis on the purely procreative function of the female role and body and in the configuration of motherhood as a patriotic duty. An essential part of the new penal code of 1930 (Title X) contained a list of crimes against the «integrity and health of the race [stirpe]». Remaining in force after 1946, the Rocco Code introduced harsh control over women’s reproductive behavior and bodies. A watershed in the contemporary history of clandestine abortion was the transition from the 1960s to the 1970s, when anti-abortion laws in Western societies underwent a radical revision. In Italy, this occurred through the approval of Law 194 in 1978.