Challenging the Right to Abortion: Religious and Right-Wing Political Movements in the Italian 2022 Election Campaign

In recent times, political leaders have increasingly embraced Christian values and aligned with religion-based movements. The 2022 general elections in Italy are a noteworthy example of this trend. The right-wing party Fratelli d’Italia, which has long championed pro-life values, secured victory and formed alliances with religion-based groups that challenge sexual, gender, and reproductive civil liberties, providing potential entry points for illiberal ideas in Western democracies. In this framework, we employ computational methods and a large dataset of social media messages collected in the month preceding the 2022 Italian elections to answer the following questions: What actors discussed abortion? Which frames did they use? Analyzing social media is important as the topic of abortion, while not at the center of attention for politicians and legacy media, has nonetheless been widely discussed online by various not strictly political actors (influencers, bloggers, communities, etc.). These discussions have also been fueled by the debate on the same issues underway in other countries and exemplify the role and impact of social media on democratic life.