Patrick Hanafin is Director of Research at the Department of Law, Birkbeck College, UK.

Contents: Introduction: conceiving life in law; Law, gender and nation in contemporary Italy; Rethinking reproductive freedom: the case of abortion; Vitapolitics: the campaign against reproductive choice; The embryo's sovereign power; Reformulating reproductive citizenship; Bibliography; Index.

This volume examines the evolution of reproductive law in Italy from the `far west' of the 1980s and 90s through to one of the most potentially restrictive systems in Europe. The book employs an array of sociological, philosophical and legal material in order to discover why such a repressive piece of legislation has been produced at the end of a period of substantial change in the dynamic of gender relations in Italy. The book also discusses Italian policy within the wider European policy framework.