Abstract

In all Western societies the period between the 1950s and 1970s saw a process of separating sex from reproduction, along with an intense public and political debate on (anti)abortion laws. This research study examines the case of Italy. The timeline goes from the birth of the Republic up to the popular referendum which in 1981 established the Law 194/1978, Norme per la tutela sociale della maternità e sull’interruzione volontaria della gravidanza (Norms for the Social Protection of Motherhood and about the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy). The essay reconstructs the national and transnational scenario in which the revision of the penal code was requested, elaborated, discussed and finally turned into Italian law in 1978; the origins of the movements in favor of birth control and against the crime of abortion in the post-Second World War period (at a time when the issue of overpopulation had been raised at a global level); and, later, the development of this movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The aim is to highlight the interaction between various political cultures and their respective contributions to the debate and reform drive: from the proto environmentalism perspective of the birth control movement, until the self-determination issue of the feminist movement