An Uncertain Secularisation: Reproductive Rights in Contemporary Italy
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Patrick Hanafin
Patrick Hanafin is Professor of Law at Birkbeck, University of London. He has published widely in the areas of biolaw and political theory. His publications include Conceiving Life: Reproductive Politics and the Law in Contemporary Italy (2007) and Constituting Identity: Political Identity Formation and the Constitution in Post-Independence Ireland (2001). He has held visiting fellowships at Harvard Law School, the European University Institute and the University of Capetown.
Abstract
The area of reproductive politics in Italy demonstrates both a process of secularisation and desecularisation. On the one hand the highly conservative Assisted Reproduction Act of 2004 has been challenged in the courts leading to a resecularisation of this area of law. On the other hand the Abortion Act of 1978 has been descularised by the high usage by doctors of the conscientious objection clause of the Act. This article looks at this parallel movement of both secularisation and desecularisation.
About the author
Patrick Hanafin is Professor of Law at Birkbeck, University of London. He has published widely in the areas of biolaw and political theory. His publications include Conceiving Life: Reproductive Politics and the Law in Contemporary Italy (2007) and Constituting Identity: Political Identity Formation and the Constitution in Post-Independence Ireland (2001). He has held visiting fellowships at Harvard Law School, the European University Institute and the University of Capetown.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Secularization as a Paradigm of ‘Cross-Thought’
- Political Theology from Satan to Legitimacy
- Desacralized Law: Shakespeare and the Tragedy of Sovereignty
- Law, Politics, and Liberal Hope: A Literary and Anthropological Analysis of Secular Society
- An Uncertain Secularisation: Reproductive Rights in Contemporary Italy
- Research
- Spatial Vulnerability at the Spectral Threshold
- Digging Holes and Building Walls: Spatial Imaginations of the Law in Stories by Franz Kafka and Rachel Shihor
- Broken Justice: Justice and Relativism in the Work of Friedrich Dürrenmatt
- Law’s Dark Clarity: Hugo and the ‘Misery’ of Legal Categorizations
- Book Reviews
- Carlo Pelloso: Democracies and Republics Between Past and Future: From the Athenian Agora to e-Democracy, from the Roman Republic to Negative Power
- Björn Quiring: Trials of Nature: The Infinite Law Court of Milton’s Paradise Lost
- Heather James, Ovid and the Liberty of Speech in Shakespeare’s England
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Secularization as a Paradigm of ‘Cross-Thought’
- Political Theology from Satan to Legitimacy
- Desacralized Law: Shakespeare and the Tragedy of Sovereignty
- Law, Politics, and Liberal Hope: A Literary and Anthropological Analysis of Secular Society
- An Uncertain Secularisation: Reproductive Rights in Contemporary Italy
- Research
- Spatial Vulnerability at the Spectral Threshold
- Digging Holes and Building Walls: Spatial Imaginations of the Law in Stories by Franz Kafka and Rachel Shihor
- Broken Justice: Justice and Relativism in the Work of Friedrich Dürrenmatt
- Law’s Dark Clarity: Hugo and the ‘Misery’ of Legal Categorizations
- Book Reviews
- Carlo Pelloso: Democracies and Republics Between Past and Future: From the Athenian Agora to e-Democracy, from the Roman Republic to Negative Power
- Björn Quiring: Trials of Nature: The Infinite Law Court of Milton’s Paradise Lost
- Heather James, Ovid and the Liberty of Speech in Shakespeare’s England
