BIOETHICAL ISSUES ABOUT ASSISTED REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY: MOTHERHOOD, INFERTILITY STIGMA AND AUTONOMY

This inquiry aims to explore some of the bioethical issues related to Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). Starting from the cultural construction of the link between motherhood and female corporeity, the inquiry goes on to analyze female infertility experienced as a stigma and the consequent role played by ART as the medical response to their condition. At the end of the second part, a struggle for women’s autonomy emerges from the feminist analysis related to ART. The latter principle will be at the center of the last part, which aims to highlight the importance of the environment as the key to understanding both access to reproductive techniques and their principles, through a comparison between ART’s situation in the Italian and Nigeran context.