The Bio-Theo-Politics of Birth

In his controversial newspaper articles, interviews, and letters of 1975 opposing the legalisation of abortion in Italy, Pier Paolo Pasolini often qualifies life as sacred. Problematically, this is, for him, in the first instance, an “obvious” fact that does not need to be demonstrated and must be taken for granted. ¹ Pasolini thus refuses to conceive the notion of life (or even nature) as a merely symbolic construction: before the emergence of both religion and law, life has in itself an inherent meaningful value and is as such hieratic. ² Yet, at the same time, he also readily emphasises the political implications of his claim. According to him, we are dealing here with a “principle” that is “even stronger than the principle of democracy.” ³ In a few words, the sacredness of life allows us to think politics straightforwardly as an “ecology.” The first and most important biopolitical objective of the human species has always been its survival and propagation; from this perspective, human birth is sacred and “blessed” (benedetta) as long as it remains a “guarantee” for the life of the species, “the continuation of man.” ⁴ Conversely, when births far outnumber deaths and we face a demographic catastrophe, every new child starts to represent a “contribution to the self-destruction of humanity, and is thus damned [maledetto].” ⁵ Given that today we have reached such a threshold, abortion could eventually be legalised only on the basis of ecological “extenuating circumstances.” ⁶