Abstract

The essay aims to analyse the role of womanhood in the women’s reproductive Italian laws, underlining a connection between abortion law and the ever-increasing debate on surrogacy. The current mother’s neutralisation in surrogacy is, in fact, strictly linked with women’s neutralisation in abortion and planned parenthood laws and judgments. Paradoxically, by analysing the ECHR and Constitutional Court’s sentences about the position of the unborn child’s father, it is possible to determine women’s primary role in reproduction. On the other hand, the secondary position of natural mothers who are offering surrogacy is strictly connected to its contractual nature. Against free market risks the costitutional Italian system can oppose an old “regula jurisµ, the principle “mater semper certa estµ.