Autore
Bonu Rosenkranz, Giada

Titolo
In the Best Interest of the Woman and the Child: Counterintuitive Welfare and the Criminalization of Surrogacy in Italy
Periodico
Politiche Sociali
Anno: 2025 - Fascicolo: 3 - Pagina iniziale: 593 - Pagina finale: 617

This paper examines how feminist narratives are mobilized to justify punitive policies, focusing on Italy’s 2024 reform that extends the criminalization of surrogacy to acts committed abroad. Presented as protecting women and children, the law functions instead as an instrument of exclusion targeting LGBTQIA+ families, migrant women, and reproductive autonomy. The analysis situates this case within the concept of counterintuitive welfare, which captures three mechanisms: protective measures producing discriminatory outcomes; the use of law to restrict access to rights in the name of protecting others; and the capacity of such policies to polarize consensus during democratic crisis. Based on a Critical Frame Analysis of parliamentary, civil society, and media debates, the paper shows how references to dignity, nature, and motherhood transform feminist language into a moralizing tool of repression. In the context of Italy’s far-right government, this process exemplifies how democratic backsliding unfolds through the language of care, turning welfare into a vehicle of exclusion and control.



SICI: 2284-2098(2025)3<593:ITBIOT>2.0.ZU;2-R
Testo completo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.7389/120040
Testo completo alternativo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.7389/120040

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