ABSTRACT
Introduction ARTs have developed quickly and broadly over the last few decades, producing a number of new options that have changed the definition of kinship and parenthood, bodies and gender relations, and even culture and life itself. ARTs, in fact, have often questioned the traditional (and taken-for-granted) meaning of kinship, shifting the attention toward the hegemonic medical-technological devices. Although ARTs are globally accepted as concrete options for overcoming unintended childlessness, the potential “disruptive” power of reproductive technologies has not produced the same social effects all over the world. ARTs have enabled innovative forms of kinship and parenthood in many social and cultural contexts (Thompson 2005; Inhorn and Birenbaum-Carmeli 2008), while participating in the reinforcement of the traditional family model in others. National regulation of ARTs can be seen as the expression of local, morally oriented answers to globally available biomedical knowledge. When these technologies meet national institutional and political actors, they become situated within a specific social order and set of moral values. This interweaving of elements produces specific procreative interfaces, the loci where the law and reproductive practices meet (Melhuus 2005). The contribution of this chapter will be to show how ARTs, when embedded in a specific cultural and social order, can be used by more (and even less) powerful actors as instruments for reproducing a traditional model of society. To accomplish this aim, the chapter analyzes the case of Italy, which does not reflect the expectations of changes in family patterns often related to ARTs; rather, it represents a reinforcement of the status quo through the enforcement of a monolithic (and singular) model of family, consisting of a married father and mother with biologically related children, preferably born within marriage. The Italian case is particularly relevant for three main reasons: the restrictive national regulations; the institutional attempt to create a unique (Catholic) moral and ethical view on reproductive issues; and the actual distance between politics and lay people. The case of ARTs in Italy, therefore, will be used as a key lens through which to look at the relationship between science, biopolitics, and citizenship.
