It may have been inspired by Habla con ella, Pedro Almodovar's film in which the young dancer Alicia, in a coma due to an accident, becomes pregnant by Benigno, the nurse caring for her. Anna Smajdor, Professor of Medical Bioethics University of Oslo, takes up and elaborates on a suggestion made in 2000 by Israeli researcher Rosalie Ber "to circumvent the moral problems of gestational surrogacy" by using women in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) as surrogate wombs. To the practice she gives the [...]

Starting with the very painful case of the newborn baby who died at the Pertini hospital in Rome -probably by accidental suffocation, the judiciary will ascertain the causes: it could also be 'cot death' or something else- many and many conclude that rooming-in is a dangerous and wrong practice and that babies should stay in nurseries. I remember, however, that in the past women fought hard for rooming-in and for more than obvious reasons: not to be separated from the newborn after the long cohabitation [...].

Fighting serves. The revolt of midwives and nurses has foiled the English National Health Service's (NHS) plan to organise dedicated 'transgender maternity' services. On 16 December, an advertisement had appeared to recruit staff to manage the training of 'trans and non-binary people giving birth' in 40 NHS maternity services, an announcement that provoked an immediate reaction from midwives. A group of around 300 nurses, midwives and psychologists wrote an open letter to Lizzie [...]

At least three things can be said about the bill filed by Maurizio Gasparri to amend Article 1 of the Civil Code and introduce into our legal system the recognition of the legal capacity of the conceived 'with the intention of preventing voluntary abortion in any form, whether legal or clandestine'. The first: it is highly unlikely that the bill will reach parliamentary halls. The immediate consequence of its approval would be the substantial inapplicability of law 194 because abortion would in fact be tantamount to murder. None of the majority forces [...]

Laura Boldrini announces her intention to immediately deposit in Parliament a series of proposals that she calls a 'rights package'. These include the idea of an amendment to Article 37 of the Constitution which states that 'A working woman has the same rights and, for equal work, the same pay as a worker. Working conditions must allow the fulfilment of her essential family function and ensure special adequate protection for the mother and child'. Boldrini's intent is [...]

In her vulgar attack, stigmatised by the right and the left, Rula Jebreal claims -on the basis of a Spanish press scoop- that 'Meloni's father is a notorious drug trafficker/convicted criminal who has served time in a prison' when she 'states that asylum seekers are criminals who want to replace whites' (again for the record, Meloni has announced that she will sue Jebreal for attributing this statement to her). The right-wing leader has never made any secret of her abandonment [...]

A few days ago we published 'When abortion matters to men'. In the post we mentioned the various methods of involuntary termination of pregnancy, including the abortion pill RU 486, also known as 'chemical abortion'. Chemical abortion is spoken of as a step forward in self-determination. Younger women in particular can get confused between 'morning-after' contraception (which must be taken within 72 hours of risky intercourse) and the abortion pill, with which pregnancy can be terminated up to the ninth week. [...]

by Pamela Paul Perhaps it makes sense that women - complacent and pleasant-looking creatures, selfless and just as pretty - were the ones who finally brought our polarised country together. Because the far right and the far left have found the one thing they can agree on: women don't matter. The position of the right is best known, the movement has been aggressively dedicated for decades to depriving women of basic rights. Thanks also to two judges [...]

This morning in the province of Lodi, in Casalmaiocco, an 11-year-old boy, Gioele, was forcibly snatched and suddenly and traumatically removed from the mother with whom he was living. Here are the facts as told by a MaternaMente activist present at the time: 'Deborah and her son had been summoned for a meeting by the social services this morning. The meeting took place online and the SS used reassuring tones. The mother then went to the municipality to [...].

The US Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization represents an extraordinary reversal (...) Yet it was not unexpected. In the long and painful prelude to the decision, many states severely restricted access to reproductive health care. The fig leaf covering these restrictions was that induced abortion was a dangerous procedure that required stricter regulation to protect the health of women seeking such care. The facts belie this false rhetoric. The latest data available in the United States [...]

How did American pro-lifers win the war against Roe v. Wade? In the article of which we present you with extended excerpts, journalist Sarah Ditum explains how the Democrats' neglect and arrogance unwittingly helped set women's rights in America back 50 years. "When did it become certain that American women's right to abortion would be revoked? The Supreme Court's ruling that "Roe was terribly wrong from the start" leaked almost two months ago, [...]

What will American women do now? Will they win solidarity among themselves, as they have always won in Italy with regard to abortion, holding together Catholics and agnostics, left-wing and right-wing women in defence of law 194/78? Or will they settle into opposing camps, to put it mildly, the quasi-civil war underway in the United States? The midterm elections in November, with the Republicans as favourites, will be the first test: how many female voters, albeit [...].