LHJ Seminar: The Becoming Legal: Feminism, Abortion, and the Law in 1970s Italy

Law Health Justice is pleased to invite you to a seminar by Elena Caruso, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Waterloo, Ontario.

In my presentation, I argue that the notion of ‘becoming legal’ contributes to making more visible processes, practices and social movements that tend to be marginalised in conventional accounts of legal reform (Enright and Cloatre 2017 and 2018). To develop this argument, I narrow the focus to the ‘becoming legal’ of abortion in Italy from 1971 to 1981, emphasising the pivotal role played by the feminist movement in this transformative process. Over this ten-year span, I focus on three constitutive dynamics of the becoming legal: first, the ‘social decriminalisation’ of abortion, which broadly refers to the de-stigmatisation of abortion while draconian bans were still formally valid; second, the legal reform of Law 194/1978, that legalised abortion under certain circumstances; and, third, the immediate phase of implementation of Law 194/1978 and its defence from the risk of repeal during the abortion referenda of 1981. My research for this presentation draws upon a wide range of archival materials - from feminist and political records to historical parliamentary debates - and a set of qualitative interviews with abortion campaigners.

Our speaker:

Elena is an AMTD Global Talent Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Waterloo, where she is conducting a two-year project entitled ‘Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: Self-Managed Abortion in Italy’. In July 2023, she successfully defended her doctoral thesis at Kent Law School, England. Her research has been published in the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics, The Italian Law Journal, Feminist Legal Studies, and Feminist Review. As an abortion-rights advocate, Elena is a founding member of the Italian Pro-choice Network ‘Rete Italiana Contraccezione e Aborto’ and of ‘Aborto in Pillole‘ the first newsletter entirely dedicated on abortion in Italian.

Please join us for lunch and further conversation after the seminar.