In spring 2015, the Orlando Circle in Bologna, a feminist association for social promotion, invites Lunàdigas to reflect upon reproductive rights in contemporary Italy and the need to legitimize the position of childfree women.

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GIULIA: «When we read about the Lunàdigas project we immediately felt the need to bring this project to Bologna, because it is a fundamental issue we felt the need to share, as cross-sectionally as possible, which is the same approach Lunàdigas is bringing forward on its path.»

FRANCA: «I’m here and I’m extremely grateful to the lunàdigas who I think truly undertook a path which is extremely useful, as very seldom you get an opportunity to talk about non-motherhood choices.
Since for me this is a deeply-rooted choice, having the opportunity to give voice to this choice, it is very valuable. So, I come here to share my views with the others, because often even within feminist environments that I’ve been involved with for years and years, it is not a an easy topic, instead it finds some resistance because sometimes you think that necessarily when one expresses one’s reasons… I’m always keen on talking about it, also because every time I ask to a friend or companion, why she chose motherhood, I never get an answer, never.
I think it makes sense to talk about it, also, I have a particular background, as I have two sisters, we are three sisters, all three of us chose not to have children, with different kind of reasons… So, I’m very glad you’re here, I urge you to keep being more and more brazen, and more and more explicit on this subject, gathering the voices of women because they are so many and worth listening to.»

ELIA: «Indeed, I also find that…the narratives of non-reproductive choices are very rich and diverse, which I can’t find in the narratives of reproductive choices. Not sure if it’s me being biased, so that kind of reasoning doesn’t really touch me, what makes you choose that life option. Or if somehow this need to justify this type of biographical choice, forces you to reflect more deeply on the subject, which then triggers a different kind of narration, more complex than simply: “I wanted to, I felt the need to, and so on..” And with respect to this project in particular, I came because I was intrigued by the method itself that you used. Yes, I was intrigued by this narrative, this collective, open, recursive narrative, which also seems to me… appropriate to the type of topic addressed, very suitable to keeping together this complexity of this storytelling. I don’t know, as for myself I always hanged out in scenes where non-reproductive choices were the norm rather than the exception.
So, how can I say it? This has always increased my sense of estrangement towards those women, companions, friends who instead made that kind of choice, with respect to which, despite their attempts to explain it, I never managed to fully understand. So maybe one of the reasons why I am here tonight is to listen also narratives that… I suppose I can understand, that I can relate to.»

SHAKTI: «I am a student. Arriving here in Bologna, a totally new world opened up for me, as I come from Marche’s countryside. As a result, I found myself to deal with a lot of issues that I had never even heard about it. In particular this one, as soon as I was offered to participate in this event, I got the chance, for the first time,to really think about these issues. I’m very intrigued by what I’ll see and hear tonight. I must admit I didn’t get the chance to document myself on the subject. For me, this is a taboo topic, as I come from a large family, I have three sisters, my mother chose to dedicate most of her life to us. While now that she’s older, she begins to devote herself to other things she likes. I don’t know, I see as if she had truly chosen them, being more aware, but at the same time I see she couldn’t live without us. After receiving this invitation, I talked about this topic with her. She’s German and she told me, I was telling her about how maybe from my point of view a woman who chooses not to have children, may be subject to taboos, discrimination from certain points of view, and so on. Instead, she told me how, from her point of view, how she felt good coming here in Italy, about forty years ago, with a little girl. And how in Italy motherhood was well received, it was good to be a mother, it was the purpose of life. While from her point of view, growing up in Germany she felt like as if a woman could only feel realized through the choice of a career, rather than the family. So it made me a little…Then of course, a lot went on, the story of a lifetime, one’s point of view, and so on… So I don’t really know how Germany was at the time, as Germany is now, but it intrigued me because I had my family history, my mother’s point of view but I was missing something on the other side. So I came also to see, so that I can get a personal idea, as I’m still young, and not thinking about it yet. So I’d like to capture opinions and things like that.»

GIOIA: «I was very interested in it, as it’s a taboo topic, you never talk about it, so as all things… While motherhood is a very complex subject. And it is true, what others also said, that nobody actually tells you why they had children. It’s the same thing, it is something difficult to express. But some defined points are there, in my opinion.
The concept of a woman who does not want children, is seen as a weird person, maybe even the sheep that does not reproduce is lunatic. I don’t know why the word lunatic comes to me, perhaps it is connected. You’re weird, as a woman you are missing something. Well, considering this, I never felt strange, I chose not to have children. but lots of other women chose this back then. I don’t know if this is the same nowadays, but I didn’t feel weird. Even, as Franca said, I started to think about it very late, I had taken my choice at fourteen I think, and I chose not be a housewife.
I don’t know why, I felt this very strongly. I don’t know why for me being a housewife was…and clearly I felt the thrust to have a career. I did well in my studies, I thought, why shouldn’t I work, earn, and have a career as men do? Clearly all that blurred out… With hindsight, I’ve seen many women who had a great career, who have beautiful children, so it’s not always like this. But the fact that there were other friends of mine who had no children and who I still meet around… Again, women of my generation… Think that the first document I’v done with the first feminists, the first flyer we made was about non-motherhood. That struck me very much, I had this impact right away,with my own thoughts, I don’t want to be a mom, nor a housewife, and these people debated about this topic. The debate revolved around the fact that it’s not natural to have children. Thinking that only around 35 I vaguely started considering that maybe I could have a child, maybe I had censored before this desire, not desire, I don’t even know how to define it,but it made me understand that it is not so natural. It’s not a natural having the desire to be a mother.
I never hear anyone saying: “I want a child for such and such a reason. It happens.” Or as portrayed in the movies or in TV: “We decide to have a baby” Very trivial things, here. Such a complex subject is always approached in trivial terms. That’s why your work and your project is interesting, because you have to ask yourself, on both why you don’t or why you do…
There may be many reasons,for people to decide to have children. I think questioning this can only good. Above all, avoid things like… these judgments that are given. I must say that I never felt any less because I had no children compared to those had. But surely there are some differences in social life, because well, even at work there is a difference. I remember it was called the Cinderella syndrome, when we had meetings, I work in a public agency, at 4:30, women rushed off. Not having children, I made up I had a sick mother, because I wanted to get away too. There is some conditioning. Although I was at peace with it,because many of my friends didn’t have them, but in those circumstance, I paid the price for being different. Or else, I don’t know, you can’t dare to say somethingabout children who are poorly educated:“You don’t have children, you can’t know.” Or the other aspect, that of being envious: sometimes they are jealous, sometimes you are pitied. One who told me, “The most beautiful thing in the world is having children.” I said, but I’ve traveled a lot. I defended myself. Since I had to defend myself, clearly it is not well accepted. At the same time I was envied when the children are in their teens, giving huge problems, almost everyone, they say to me: “Lucky you with no children, you don’t have these problems.” So it’s always twofold, I think it’s interesting to analyze this conflicting aspect. This is a more or less… what I wanted to put on the table.»

VALENTINA: «So, in the last few years, probably because of the faculty I chose at university, anthropology, I have developed a great interest for all those issues that, I’m talking about our culture, of course, so in Italy, that get naturalized: for example having children.
As I listened to all the testimonies, I was thinking when I was a kid, and actually I took it for granted that a woman should be a mother, and this is absurd. As the lady rightly said being or not a mother should truly be a personal choice. It’s not a matter of a maternal instinct, what is the maternal instinct? The maternal instinct, in my humble opinion, is simply something that we are taught. At 30, you should be a mother because you are a woman, because we have a reproductive system which should make us want to have children, women as care givers. So I think this is all very tricky, also for the various perspectives imposed on others. I wanted to tell you a funny story.
My family sees me like a black sheep, my mother always tells me, “You will not have children, you don’t like children, you’ll spend your life traveling, building up a career. My sister is my opposite, she is the one who says… she’s studying, she’s very good, but she only thinks about having children. We always talk about how she’ll name her children. My friends, on the other hand, there is one right here, they were telling me that a few nights ago they were talking about funny stories of our university life to tell their children. Then, speaking among them, they said, no, wait, but we will not have children, we’ tell them to Vale’s children. So you see the different perspective? In what perspective a woman should be a mother? What is the basic behavior of a woman who should have children? Or she shouldn’t, as she wouldn’t be a good mother. Does it depends on you not liking children? I think the whole topic is a taboo. Why is a free non-reproductive choice a taboo?
The idea that a woman is a mother is so naturalized that it’s taken for granted, and it’s unthinkable that a woman even at 22 years old can say: “I don’t know if I want to be a mom, because I want to do so much more that I don’t know if in the end I want to be a mom too. I might or I might not. It doesn’t seem to me so special or so improbable. It is a free, simple choice, so I think that all these topics, and I thank you for everything you’re doing, as once again we speak of something naturalized while it shouldn’t be, because it should be a free choice. But the culture, all that that is around us is so weighty, we are taught to be mothers, because we are women, that I really think a lot of girls, also very very young, do not realize it’s not natural to want to be a mom, it’s just a choice, that’s it. So thank you for what you’re doing and so you can also open many other people’s eyes, on the free choice.»

EMILIA: «I came here straight away when I discovered this platform, this project, and the opportunity to meet, to talk about this topic, because for the first time there is a name. I strongly believe that a name gives us the opportunity to identify a problem, a theme, to put it in front of our eyes. And I think one of the strongest achievements of this project is that this name is meaningful. It’s a real name that we feel ours, that immediately tells us something. A name we needed, I felt the need of such a name. I felt the need of it without knowing exactly why, because I haven’t yet made a choice, so I don’t know how things will be, I can’t even imagine it now.
On my part I have a mother who tells me whatever choice you will make, I will support you, I’ll be happy, I’ll be satisfied, I’ll back you up. A mother who lived to the fullest the ’70s and ’80s, a mother who supports me, stands beside me, and therefore leaves me total freedom to make my choice. This makes me feel a great burden. I feel a great burden, because on the one hand I feel like having to fulfill a task, to what she might have wanted to do, if only a few things had gone differently. If only she had more money, if only she hadn’t started to teach at school, if she had kept on trying to start a university career, if only she hadn’t a mother living alone that she could not abandon. When she had to rush back here from Germany she decided than to settle down. But I think she probably would also have had the strength to make such a choice. She didn’t do it because of a series of collateral issues that have made it much easier and right for her in that moment doing these things here. I now have the real opportunity to sincerely and intimately do all that. I’ve got every chance. And this thing here makes me feel very lonely. It gives me the feeling to have a weight, a burden, something to be achieved, and not actually having the tools. Of never being able to do an appropriate choice to what she perhaps would expect from me, because around me, my classmates, the people I went to school with they never left home, I come from Catania, Sicily, they all study medicine, engineering. They’ve all been engaged for ten years, we are 24; they already think about settling down, marriage. That’s what happens. So you see, how can I put it? I feel a deep sense of isolation, and the idea that however I have the approval from my family background, on the one hand, it comforts me, but only in theory. Because there is no name, because there is no chance to be part of a larger community. And with this name I understood that the strength of such a project, the strength that gives to us, gives me is the chance to glimpse the horizon of a community and a dialogue. So such a choice is not just the most radical dimension of a certain feminist thought coming from a reality which is not the one I grew up in, but that comes from at least two decades ago, and that resonates within me thanks to my mother’s words, thanks to my studies, but not directly. However, it has been filtered down, and therefore it transformed itself, and brings forward other requests. I see this, and however I can see the chance to face it removing this sense of solitude, fatigue, sadness, and the feeling of never being up to the task, whatever choice we’ll make. I see that clearly in this, in the chance to talk about it, to have many testimonies, many experiences, in being able to transform what is most intimate and private, something to be shared. In my opinion, this is the gem of this project, and I thank you so very much for being here.»

MARIAROSA: «Well, I don’t really know how to start, because I have to go back with my memory to long ago, because my problems started when I was twenty, so being now 80,I have to go with my memory very far back. So try to contextualize me in a kind of society that I think you can’t even imagine, because when I was thirty and I decided with my boyfriend to marry only with a civil ceremony…
I worked for Telecom at the time, and I was told, “Be careful what you do because you might get fired.” Coming to say this regarding the choice of two people, you can have an idea of the limitations back then. Anyway, ours was a shared choice, and well, I had no children. And I am glad that I never had any regret, any sorrow, for making the choice I made. Because in life I managed to do many things that I couldn’t have done with children, because when you have children, they must come first because they didn’t ask to be born. So you have duties towards them which constantly bind you. Of course it was quite difficult, because in the common judgment I was a rare bird, not to say a black sheep, because most of friends my age had children. I have been very lucky that through my husband’s family I have been surrounded by people, like her, because we have known each other for many years, who had no children. And this comforted me because, I said, I’m no exception, it’s the norm. Anyway, sometimes I reflect upon it, and my choices must have been influenced by some family events too. Because my brother, when he was born, from my father’s second wife, she was forty years old, and experiencing issues at childbirth, my brother was taken out with forceps and this caused him an injury and for many years he was epileptic. Believe me, living with a person from childhood to adulthood, luckily he’s doing great now, things can also resolve very well. However, the presence of a sick person, affecting the whole family, I don’t know if you’ve seen Bellocchio’s Fists in the pocket that gives you a vague idea of what happens in a family with a person with such a dramatic disease. I think it might have influenced me, as I have often reflected upon this: What if I have a sick child?»

TESTIMONE: «Let me start by saying that I have no children and I didn’t regret it either. Well, this thing did not happen, I didn’t look for it, I made sure it didn’t happen. However, from this to speaking of a choice of non-motherhood, as well as choice of motherhood, well, I think that this already is a topic for discussion. This choice of motherhood or non-motherhood, from the moment your body allows you to do it onwards, up until the end, because you might as well… I also thought about adoption, when I was no longer able to have them, I asked myself why I didn’t adopt them, if adopting was a good choice. As well as… I think it’s also important that on one side one should not live in isolation, somehow one should share responsibility of a child with others. But it is also true that today you could do it on your own, because times have changed today. And this, in my opinion, brings back this… I find it hard to use the word choice. I find it hard to call choice something you could suddenly change the option, right?»

FRANCA: «I am a teacher, I teach in kindergarten, I deal daily with girls and boys, I have a great relationship with them, I often prefer them to adults, I find them much more genuine, I am very satisfied about this daily relationship, it nourishes me daily. I never had to deal with parents telling me I couldn’t understand because I had no children. On the other hand, despite not having children as a teacher I was able to identify parents’ failings, which sometimes is widespread, some others is not. But this also to dispel a myth, although a childfree woman shouldn’t always had to start by saying “but I like kids.” And there are several reasons behind choice, in my case a conscious choice I believe, about my not wanting children and is related to various levels.
The first level is related to individual freedom, as I know there is a big price to pay on your individual freedom if you have children. I say that children are incapable offspring all your life, because it is actually very hard to free your mind from the commitment of children, even when they are older, grown up, when they should be fully independent. And my goal in life is to preserve my freedom, the search for freedom, so I’m not willing to pay this price regarding my individual freedom.
Another set of reasons instead is related to the actual world’s geopolitical situation, maybe I have an apocalyptic vision, but as a matter of fact I think we live in a severely unbalanced world, where being born on one or the other side of the planet makes all the difference. And I don’t see why I should reproduce me here and explain to my son or daughter that they were only lucky to be born in Europe and not in one of the African countries I go to. Because it’s only luck, nothing else.
Therefore, I believe that the world’s catastrophic situation, mainly the environmental crisis, which is irreversible, in my opinion, or even global overpopulation. There are always worries about birth-rates decline. They always terrify us, as if we don’t reproduce, we will be doomed to extinction. Besides being pretty coherent if we do cease to exist, given the damage we’ve done. Anyway, we have the opposite problem, we face global overpopulation, rather than extinction, despite this is seldom brought up lately. And then at some point, in addition to these topics, for me not having children was indeed a political choice. Because, as a feminist, having trained a critical eye on the world and how the world goes, I’ve always wondered why women did not realize of the great bargaining power that they could have had, in saying “we, for such a disgusting world, that doesn’t recognize nor respect us, that doesn’t make us feel welcome, that primarily does not acknowledge us, we must instead continue to make children for a world that sucks so much.”
I won’t have children for a world that sucks, I don’t create arms for a work force in a world that doesn’t recognize dignity to women. So for me not having children is also a political choice for many years I proposed to the women to use it as a political tool, too. But obviously, it is too strong a topic that touches such an intimacy so women don’t feel ready yet to deal with it in these terms.
At least in this part of the world, they did it in other parts. So, in short, these are some of the things I have to say.»

ANGELA: «First of all, I want thank the directors and all of you for speaking out in such a rich and diverse way, because if I had an idea at the beginning probably I have changed it during the listening. This is one of the most beautiful things so I wanted to say thank you. And then, to stay on the subject, I totally agree with what Emilia said, being able to name yourself is awesome.
After saying for years I don’t want to be a mother, I’ll never be a mother, being able to say today, I am lunàdiga is quite something. We might be proved wrong in the future, we may prove ourselves wrong with time, but that’s not important. I think what’s important is to focus my desire today. Why was it important for Giulia and myself, to invite Lunàdigas here today in Bologna, where did it spring from? Giulia certainly told us a bit about some of the reasons, not very personal ones. I’ll add my personal note, and probably she will do too afterwards.
We were not born in Bologna, this can be heard from our accents and we didn’t grow up within fully emancipated families, where the woman already had a role in society, maybe even a job. I come from a small town in the province of Naples, my mother took years to be able to find a job, and to be even slightly independent from the male sphere. Perhaps only now at sixty, she enters public life. So I was surrounded, I was raised by women who I respected and for whom I feel a great affection, but that surely represented a one-way model. And I say this because I firmly believe that our life choices we make them mainly basing ourselves on models, on keywords, on habits, the transmission of knowledge, the closeness in which we lived and grew. Some philosophers would say in a complicated way that behaviors are disciplinary apparatuses. I lived it on my skin and maybe many of you and many others here today have experienced it, that a set of rules brought you to behave in a certain way. And why do I say that? Because I think that to get to say I am lunàdigas, I don’t want to be a mom, there is some work to do, it’s not to be taken for granted, that even though I don’t consider it a taboo today, I couldn’t say today in 2015. In the Western world non-motherhood is a taboo. I could never say that, because really a lot has changed. Yet, at the same time, I cannot deny that there is a path, a whole path of identification of one’s own desires to be made, because otherwise you can be born and stay in the same pattern of woman or man.
This was a first thing I wanted to say, the second is: man, I’d like to think more about this. Not only because it seems to be absent from the discussion today, but also because I happened to have mostly male partners, therefore I’ve had to constantly face with this desire, which, alas, was almost always there with the partner I was with. And also, tough luck, they thought I could be a good mother, I don’t know why. So I also had to fight, saying look you’re wrong, not only are you wrong, it’s just not my thing… So I tried to investigate this relationship with men, I clearly asked my partners, “But why do you want a child?” “I mean, what’s your wish?” What I’ve heard them saying over and over again, also in some researches I did for other reasons later, I found that answer again. “I have to leave something of me in this world”. I’ve seen this same answer in some testimonies in the web doc, given by men among other things, saying, “I must transmit and leave something in this world”. As if what you can transmit goes through your biology. I don’t know, I always found this thought very disturbing. I mean, if I had to leave… First of all, do I really have to leave something? Why? I might as well pass through and disappear, I don’t feel it as an mandatory thing. But if I were to leave something, should necessarily be a child with my features, my DNA? And this thing… I kept working on it, thinking about it, because I tried to focus what motherhood is in contemporary era and therefore with new technologies, which is something that tonight was raised several times. Before, you had to think about by the age 35, maybe now at 40 you’re still in time. Or even before if you were a heterosexual couple, surely everybody had their ways, I don’t think that before Assisted Procreation a lesbian didn’t know how to become a mother, somehow, there were ways around. But the thing has become scientifically feasible and reproducible everywhere. I keep questioning myself about this, is it really that necessary? Of course I will always support new technologies, but I can see how furiously reproductive choice is approached, and I see the denial of non-reproductive choice, especially where you have to do something to avoid it.
Because it’s not just not having sex in order to not reproduce, but also either choose a certain type of contraception, or alas, if I get pregnant, I must have an abortion. And here it’s where it starts, clearly, if I don’t want a child, this is where the whole process starts. So you really become different from women who want children. Especially in this country, where abortion is surrounded by the rhetoric of pain, sacrifice, the unfulfilled woman, and so on… These talks using negative definitions about not wanting to be a mother, choose another path, unfortunately, I keep seeing them. And I would also like to manage, but this happens in other places, in other ways, one of my strongest desires is not just not having children, but also finding strategies where non-reproduction could become a normal thing. In other words, no longer this kind of abomination, especially when you have to practice it, when you need a morning-after pill or you have to resort to IVG, that in this country sounds like something…
I close on one last note, production and reproduction excess, which also seems very current to me. One of the most flourishing industries today is the stem cell industry and the umbilical cord industry. Now, in some investigations that have been done in this area, you can see that some stem cells can be taken from aborted fetuses. Alas, women don’t want\Nto give them away, because they might rightly think, I’ve finished with that experience, I won’t donate it to you, in case I might sell it to you. In the interviews I read, something really outrageous, is that these women were told,’you wasted yourself away by having an abortion,’ they were called wasted women. You wasted yourself away, choosing to have an abortion, and now you don’t even give to research?
It’s a productive thing, you could be productive.
So my choice which is political, I use this too… for now my choice not to reproduce is a political choice. And it is a choice that is not only: I don’t want to take care of this world, but it’s also to some extent, I don’t want to reproduce this nation, and I don’t want to reproduce a certain capitalist discourse. Period, that’s it. Sorry for going on for too long.»

ELIA: «First, I wanted to thank everyone for sharing tonight, that have been very interesting, intimate, with a strong emotional impact. I have to say that I recognized myself only to a certain extent, because this common thread between being a woman and being a mother, the fact that a non-reproductive choice somehow disqualify our subjectivity as women, that is therefore difficult to sustain, as a lesbian, I didn’t feel it this way. In the sense that, as it were, before choosing not to reproduce, I chose to be a lesbian, and this has put me outside, not just of heterosexual dynamics,
but also of the reproductive economy. So it’s a particularly subjective position, because in my opinion it kind of makes you deal with almost the opposite problem. The matter is very complex, I’ll explain it with an anecdote.
I come from a middle-class family from Northern Italy, in which I always felt good, also with respect to my identity choices. At some point, as somebody said before, my mother craved for grandparenthood, so I absolutely had to reproduce. My mother comes up with a strategic reproduction plan, an excellent one. In the sense that I should have to reproduce myself, with the collaboration of a dear friend of mine who is gay, who is well known in the family, and create this complex parenting arrangement, so that somehow this baby would stay with them some time, a bit with me, a bit with my mother. In short, a kind of a very queer extended family, so much so that when my mother told me about it I told her it was crazy queer. But thanks but no thanks. I mean, I understand it’s a…what struck me, let’s say in this…how the desire for grandparenthood had been such as to make her imagine a kind of relationship, a kind of family so much outside the common framework. Despite this, let’s say…offer of cooperation to reproduction I continued not to wish to reproduce myself. Partly for political reasons, because… well, we are so careful how much we consume in half a day, but we realize how much a child consume, in terms of ecological footprint. It’s really a disaster. And partly because, in fact, I feel this form as a lesbian, I feel this form of blackmail, so somehow your subjectivity is acknowledged subject to recognition of your parenthood. This is especially true for couples. So somehow, especially in places as in Italy, where couples are not officially acknowledged and recognized, being at least a parent somehow qualifies you and allows you to claim being in a couple. I have problems with being in a couple, I have problems with reproduction. It’s a disaster. So yes, for me not having children it was also a choice against this form of validation which should pass though reproducing myself.
In the end, actually, and with this I close, for me the deepest reason behind my non-reproductive choice was actually very intimate and personal, the fact that I do not tolerate the idea of unconditional love. I mean, I want to choose and negotiate love every day, with the people I’m with. From the stories I hear, it seems to me that instead the relationship with a child it is based in this unconditional love which for me is a coercion that I can’t choose.»

FEDERICA: «I always found quite interesting this very thing about not to verbalize the choice of non motherhood, as you do in this very important documentary which is a truly fundamental political act in this country. First, because not to approach the legitimacy of individuals in a dialectical way allows to exclude from the standard discourse all those who make this choice, or rather, this non-choice, which is in itself pretty interesting. Something else I have always found rather demeaning in terms of my individuality, of my subjectivity, has always been to hear me say: “You don’t want children, because you’re selfish”. I find it more selfish to want to have children to leave something of yours in the world, if we have to put it this way, because you don’t really want to take care of someone else. Honestly, I don’t think I have that responsibility towards anyone because we already have enough to worry about in terms of what surrounds us. And something else that always affected me negatively is the thing of having to leave something biologically yours in this world, as if we were a set of cells, as an apparatus, an organ made specifically to reproduce and to leave something that it is the same as oneself. I find much more interesting something that might burst in a thousand possible ways, not necessarily an individual. So, this is something that always struck me very much.
Another very important point that was said earlier about the fact: “You don’t want children, because you don’t like them”. Absolutely not. I don’t want to take care of someone for 15-20-30 years, as long as I hope I’m there and as long as they’ll be here, because when a mother loses a child, I can’t imagine such pain. I really don’t want to get the burden of such a concern towards someone who would have to live in an unfair world, where anything can happens, very often wrong things. I myself can’t have my own satisfactions, for what we should all deserve, so why should I bring someone else into the world who would end up living in such an unfair reality. So it’s first and foremost a political act. Also this hyper control that would be imposed on my own experience. I mean, a mother is really unwillingly put at the centre of a space, to become a public space, the very moment she gets pregnant. From then on, whatever happens to your child, whatever you do to your child, will be monitored from the outside. I’ve always found it very hard to live at the level of individual freedom, the constant judgment for a mother, the way you raise and feed your own child. Take a vegan mother who chooses this type of nutrition for her child she is subject to all kind of comments as if it were not her own child, but someone else’s child, belonging to something else. I believe that as long as the whole motherhood choice will not be totally autonomous, will be important not to choose it because someone else expects it from us.
Because no one should impose any choice on anyone, including the choice of non-motherhood, which is to be lunàdigas, a term which I find very important and meaningful. So thanks for opening up such a discourse and for giving a name to our existence and experience.»

MARIAROSA: «It never had to have an abortion, because I think it’s a traumatic experience.»

FRANCA: «But I say the opposite, I say absolutely the opposite. Abortion is definitely for me not a traumatic experience. And I’ve always said it also in the public sphere, I do not consider abortion a traumatic experience at all, and I believe that until everyone keeps claiming that it is, it is bound to be, because to live this experience… I mean, if everyone, also in the women’s movement, if everybody keeps telling you that having an abortion is a very traumatic experience. So if you live this experience, you will inevitably find yourself saying to convince yourself that you lived a traumatic experience. Luckily for me, when I found myself in the situation, I was already deeply rooted in myself so it wasn’t at all a traumatic experience. It was a liberating experience, not at all traumatic, I’ve done it twice. It is a minor surgery, as you don’t enjoy having your wisdom tooth pulled out, clearly you don’t enjoy going under the knife for a curettage. But all that contour of things that surround it is the induction to experience it… I was part of a feminist collective that made posters saying abortion is not a tragedy, it doesn’t necessarily need to be. Absolutely, that has to be said.»

FEDERICA: «I have two friends, pretty close friends, so they’re not direct but indirect experiences, who after years and years of friendship and in any case of extreme intimacy, told me they had an abortion.
The experience of one in particular hit me because basically she told me that to have an abortion that day, in this private clinic of course, there were six of them. One of them at the last minute changed her mind. She said she no longer wanted an abortion. A general applause broke out, from the other girls, from the doctors, the nurses. I mean, it’s also this idea to say, I have the courage to do it anyway, as if motherhood was a matter of courage, as if it were a matter to say, I’ll take on the responsibility of what happened to me biologically, and I’ll go through with it as it is the right thing to do, according to an historical-cultural structure which is imposing it on me. And I even get an applause to subject my existence to this type of scheme of things, to this formula.»

ANGELA: «I find that the most outrageous thing, first of all is being in a country where there have been at least, I was not yet born, at least eight or nine years of struggle to have a law that at least to make it legal, to get the abortion out of clandestinity. And that this law, after thirty years, is almost completely unapplied for a reason called conscientious objection and that gives huge power to people who are doctors, who can be men or women, anyway, who are doctors and who have a huge voice in the matter, because they can say that our act, our choice not become mothers is wrong. So there’s a lot to think about, as although we said that non-motherhood is no longer a taboo, on the other hand, we we have a set of rules which can make it impractical, because you may have stumbled in a pregnancy, really just stumbled, that was the last thing you wanted.
You could have an intervention, which is very simple today, because caught in time today there is medical abortion, which is not as invasive and painful as was the surgical abortion, but on the other side you find someone empowered by law to tell you, “your choice for me is unacceptable, you can’t have an abortion, you must be a mother.” Because ultimately, that is what conscientious objection means, or it even distinguishes between rich and not rich women, because if you can afford it, you go abroad or to a private clinic, and you can still get your abortion. But what is at the base of it all is that there is still something in our cultural, legal, economic system that completely disqualifies non-motherhood, it even takes away your power to decide on this thing.
Then on what is the personal experience of a woman during, before or after the operation, I don’t generalize, but I try to notice at least the big contradictions present. Because if on the one hand there is this highlight on how dangerous the medical termination of pregnancy is, which I don’t think it has any scientific grounds, it’s not dangerous today. It is dangerous if executed illegally at the 25th week but not if you do it in time. But let’s put this aside for a moment, let’s take artificial reproduction: how long does it take to get pregnant with IVF? It takes 3-4 months and especially another woman who lends her body with invasive medical interventions, in order to produce more oocytes to give the woman who wants to get pregnant. No one ever talks about this, assisted fertilization is a beautiful thing, everyone can have kids today, nobody suffers. Well, maybe it’s not the woman who wants to get pregnant, maybe it’s the other woman suffering, the oocytes’ donor, but no one ever talks about this, we have to research it ourselves, being interested as feminist activists. This is indeed a huge abyss, and the question is not if I, from the outside, have to judge the suffering or pain of another woman. For me the question lies on the framework set up for us, and the system in which we have to move.
Then of course it’s true, if I were completely lesbian, no bisexual at all, I could skip the whole thing completely. I’ll give an example which may be on the edge, but that was the example set by Thompson in the 1970s, he slippery subject: rape. We still have a basic structure, so the lowest common denominator that women should decide: I terminate this biological process because I just don’t want it. This should be absolutely taken for granted. With Piera and others, at the women’s center we talked about it. The other side is recreate mechanisms of proximity, solidarity, I don’t even like much the word solidarity, but perhaps complicity among women. Environment where these topics are no longer private to be ushered, maybe just with your best friend, but something we can start speaking publicly again. Perhaps it is the period that we have not lived, that maybe we see when we watch documentaries about the 1970s, it is a period that I would love to make it blow up again. So to wrap up, we should blow all this up again, Lunàdigas is an excellent enzyme.»

GIULIA: «I am very happy with the discussion because it was really stimulating on so many levels. After questioning the word choice in a previous intervention, the other interventions brought me to question the word motherhood. What does motherhood itself mean? Because we’re talking motherhood, non-motherhood. A very complicated matter, a work in progress, I say personally, of feelings about this topic. I can tell you where I got to today, on April 17, 2015, updating to… so at the moment this is it. I think I’m pretty… I’m pretty sure with regard to biological fact. I can say I feel a lunàdigas on a biological level, I don’t feel the need to have a biological and physical maternal experience, this one for sure. I also feel that I cannot exclude to live motherhood in another form, in the future, it might be. I could happen to have an encounter with another human being whom I may want to take care of. So this is something that I personally don’t feel to exclude, from what has emerged so far a sort of hybrid position, and I wanted to share it.
Thinking of motherhood certainly for me, not as a biological fact, but as the very act of… The word caring keeps coming to mind, it might be this taking care, which is always this discourse, this connection with being a woman maybe, but the word caring comes to mind, which I do not feel to totally exclude. As one express it with a partner, so it can be with an individual under the age of 10, maybe, and honestly I don’t feel to rule it out. On this non-definitive choice, of not being able to know for sure so a priori, I personally think so, not exclude it a priori. As for… This was the fundamental aspect I wanted to… in a way, it’s not even necessarily connected to being a woman.
Anyone could say that, even a man, in a sense, so it’s a fairly general thought.
Thinking back to what has been said, on the political choice, because this is important, as it was said before,Into which world do I bring a human being in? So in this respect, thinking to the many individuals who are already in this world, this has always been something very present.
Even when in our country there was a lot of talk about Law 40, one of my first moves years ago,then of course, I’m totally different from years ago, but this has remained, this way of saying, the need to give birth, that motherhood or parenthood could only be expressed with the biological act. And so this chase to fertilization, the need of that procedure, rather than experiencing parenthood in a way that was not connected to biological ties, but that was related to the caring, and beyond that, to what you transmit, the transmission of values, a way to see a world, to educate, to accompany, this whole complex and very difficult process that I find anyway the hardest job in the world, which is to be parents. I always tell my mom. But on the behavioral aspect, for example my mother, who would not call herself a feminist, although she was well aware and in her twenties in the early ’70s. Yet I remember very well, I know because I breathed as her friends say, her way of being, that luckily she never craved to be a grandmother. I think of this as a feminist act, a kind of de facto feminist, although not self-declared. Maybe that’s better, rather than those 60-year-olds who call themselves feminists, but then they behave in a way which I don’t consider feminist. I prefer my mom who never identified as one, but in so many ways it is, and it influenced me a lot. That is to say “I care that you feel fulfilled, whatever allows you to be, I’m happy.” So it was never about this process of self-realizationwill certainly have to go through having a child and to make me a grandmother, in a way. So having always breathed this atmosphere, this feeling of “You have the right to self-determination, to understand what are the things that make you happy, it makes you grow with this freedom to be able to see things this way.
So this was crucial, I will never stop thanking her, that’s why I always say, if someone asks me what is my role model as a women, well, it’s my mom. It would not be a famous character, there’s not a Rosa Parks, but it’s my mom. So this is an important thing, more for the sake of sharing really, as it’s not necessarily useful for you. But I wanted to share it, also after 3-4 glasses of wine, or whatever we’ ve had to drink.»

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