Winning in the Parliament, losing in the Courts – Catholic biopolitics in different venues: the case of Italy

The catholic bio-politics, in recent years, addressed a variety of issues. In this contribution
I focus specifically on assisted reproduction and stem cell research in order to
analyse the Catholic neo-feminist discourse, and the complex interplay of discursive
arenas. Namely, I focus the attention on the reconfiguration of religious discourse
in terms of attention to feminism and gender rights, on the one side, and discursive
opportunity structures in terms of venues’ opportunities and constraints on the other.
The analysis underlined two main elements. First of all, in relation to the process of
judicialization of politics, the analysis pointed out the different opportunities and constraints
characterizing the different venues. Namely, judicialization of politics and venue
shopping are not favourable the same way for all the actors. Second, a neo-conservative
frame of revolutionary maternity gained large room in the Italian political sphere, and it
is likely to gain even more resonance in light of the current debate on surrogacy, related
to the never-ending discussion on the forms of regulation of same-sex couples in Italy.