"After forty, amniocentesis is mandatory," L. tells me one afternoon. I look at her. "I'm sure of it," she insists, pressing the point hard. It's a hot day in late October; Rome gleams in the autumn light. L. and I are doing what we've always done — talking, catching up. This time, after years of catechism classes, scout camps, summer trips, study guides for exams, and countless Sunday masses (even now, we slip into a church together some weeks, we few survivors of a friend group that grew secular with age), she calmly informs me of the (supposed) state-mandated amniocentesis.
Months earlier, I'd attended a terrace dinner — pesto pasta, eggplant parmesan, Giovanni's zucotto, late-season cherries. A gathering of ten women: some left-leaning, some right; some Catholic, some atheist (a few devout, a few devotedly anticlerical); some with children, some without; some with abortion in their past, some not; nine of them known by name, one of us anonymous. At least I was the youngest.
Two of the nine became somewhat more famous recently by writing a book, Wild Mothers, published by Einaudi in the Stile Libero series. In it, Paola Tavella and Alessandra Di Pietro express their opposition to what they call "the technological rape of the female body."
The story of Wild Mothers began a year ago when, in a major uproar, the two journalists published a letter (which il Manifesto refused to print, though il Foglio did) taking a stance on the June 12, 2005 referendum on Law 40. They would abstain, they wrote, "like the priests." How, then, did two left-wing feminists find themselves aligned with Ruini? (Paola and Alessandra met in the summer of 1993 at il Manifesto, later working together at Noi Donne and in the communications office of the center-left government's Ministry for Equal Opportunities.)
It was yet another sign that something genuinely new was happening in Italy: for the first time, the sharp divide between secularists and Catholics that had defined the great battles over divorce and abortion had fractured. As we know, the assisted reproduction referendum saw many secularists and feminists abstain or vote no, while many Catholics lined up for yes.
The book is simultaneously a scientific essay, a journalistic investigation, and a diary. It develops and deepens the argument of that letter. The opening four sentences offer its best summary: "We conceived our children in pleasure, gave birth to them crouched down, in pain and blood, nursed them at our breasts with appetite for years. And if one day they were ashamed of us — their wild mothers? If they reproached us for letting them be born as human beings, unselected, undiagnosed, untested, trusting in a fate that could have been predicted and chosen instead? Perhaps as adults they would discover a defect that could have been prevented if they had been conceived in vitro from screened embryos."
Paola Tavella and Alessandra Di Pietro address many themes in their writing, which is an unmistakable "manifesto of love for life." They begin with infertility, which has increased dramatically in recent decades: today in the West, one couple in four struggles with it. The authors identify several causes. First, environmental pollution introduces into our bodies vast quantities of harmful chemicals. There is also a social factor: male reluctance toward fatherhood. While women are bound by a biological clock (despite attempts to resist it), men remain unhurried and postpone endlessly. Impatience plays a significant role: when people want a child, they want one immediately—and they want a perfect one (more on that shortly)—so much so that they lack the patience to wait for the body's natural rhythms (hardly immune to years of contraception we've imposed on them). The result: infertility is silenced and ignored. For many reasons, it's easier to invest time and money in new reproductive technologies than to study and treat the underlying infertility.
The book denounces the invasive plunder of scientists who attempt to seize control of female reproductive capacity. "Assisted reproduction is a new way to have children, one that will soon compete directly with the other," write Paola and Alessandra, stubbornly insisting on experiencing motherhood not as a disease or technological process but as a natural event. To live a freely chosen lifestyle, respectful of the person and her rhythms, seems to them a genuine value.
Many surprises emerge in reading. But one stands out above all: who exactly are these Wild Mothers? They are those unfortunate, reckless mothers who insist on conceiving their children through an act of love (with all its attendant risks) rather than by syringe (safe, clean, sterile). Most of all—given the theme of this issue of Ombre e Luci—they are those unfortunate, reckless mothers who refuse prenatal testing and screening to learn "how" the fetus they carry is doing.
For, adding strangeness to strangeness, Paola and Alessandra oppose amniocentesis (now become an obscene, scandalous routine examination) and all investigations meant to illuminate the maternal womb in search of serious illness and unacceptable imperfection. They oppose it because they reject deterministic worldviews where eugenic selection would equal a better life.
Is this what makes me feel close to two women who in many other ways stand far from me? Is this what keeps me from understanding my friend L.? It isn't the factual error of her claim about mandatory amniocentesis after forty. What stuns me is that my friend L. is the candid spokesperson for a vision of the world that I, as a left-wing Catholic woman, cannot fathom. Because to take for granted that this country's law and medicine impose on mothers "at risk" a "very risky" test to assess that risk reveals a terrifying absence of a culture of life.
Suppose inserting a needle into the amniotic sac were harmless. Suppose this trauma posed no danger to the fetus, or (to keep it reasonable) no risk of causing the very condition it aims to prevent. What would state-mandated amniocentesis be? It would be a legislator, a judge, and a doctor deciding and imposing which lives are worth living. (I say this needlessly, but I'll say it anyway: across Europe, 89 percent of women choose abortion if amniocentesis reveals Down syndrome—the figure comes from Umberto Veronesi in an interview with l'Unità, April 26, 2005.) Can we really abandon the effort to understand what a human being is? What makes someone human?
Throughout this book runs a character that all women—all women in history—have known forever (like many parents at Fede e Luce): guilt. This protagonist, this anti-hero, winds through every page, playing a singularly decisive role.
If prenatal diagnosis is now an obligation one cannot morally escape, then the supreme guilt becomes having brought into the world an imperfect child when tests and analyses could have "illuminated" me. It is in the name of this obscured light (a dramatic reinterpretation of an Gospel parable) that in France and the United States, imperfect children have sued their mothers and doctors for "allowing" them to be born. It is in the name of this obscured light that Chiara Valentini, a journalist at l'Espresso, held up Veronica Lario as a heroine, a model "of coherence and courage," for aborting a seven-month fetus with a grave illness.
That mother took pride in her daughter... yet was ashamed of not having prevented her.
That mother took pride in her daughter... yet was ashamed of not having prevented her.
Luisella Battaglia, professor of moral philosophy at the University of Genoa and one of the few women on the National Bioethics Committee, has stated that "if today we have the ability to predict the health of those to be born—at least regarding the most serious genetic diseases—then we have a duty, not merely a right, to do so. (...) It is an ethic of responsibility that parents are called to observe, one whose boundaries science has now extended." I find myself rereading this passage several times: "we have a duty" to do so... in the name of "an ethic of responsibility."
So much could be said, objected, added. Perhaps this passage from Wild Mothers says enough. "Last summer Paola, who is nearsighted, stopped to watch in a department store a blonde little girl reaching from her stroller to grab merchandise from the shelves. The mother, barely more than a girl herself, turned the carriage when she realized she was being watched. Paola thought she meant to hide her daughter's shoplifting and said to her, laughing: Mine stole from shops at that age too. At the register I'd make them give everything back. (...) The mother came closer. She said quietly and quickly: My daughter has Down syndrome, you see? She's mongoloid. I didn't have the prenatal tests. I couldn't prevent it. Paola looked the girl in the face, saw she had Down syndrome, and went on thinking her lovely.
Getting past her embarrassment, she said: She's very sweet. I think she's beautiful too. She's five and seems like two. I can't pretend not to notice: people stare. My husband and I call her 'the invisible girl.' Then she took her daughter and left. That mother took pride in her daughter, yet she was ashamed of it—and above all, ashamed of having had her. Ashamed of not having prevented her.
Giulia Galeotti, 2006
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