The Politics of Silencing: Surrogacy, Reproductive Policy-Making, and Democratic Erosion in Italy

This paper investigates the politics of silence in the formulation of surrogacy policy in Italy, asking: whose voices are heard, and whose are silenced, in processes of policy-making? Focusing on the 2024 extension of criminal liability for surrogacy beyond national borders (Montecchio, 2025; Piersanti et al., 2025), the paper examines how the exclusion of certain subjects from public and institutional debates shapes both the content and the outcomes of policy outputs. The analysis draws on democratic theory, policy studies, and research on gender and politics to conceptualize policy-making as a site where democratic participation can be eroded through mechanisms of exclusion and moralization (Lombardo et al., 2021; Roggeband & Krizsán, 2018; Verloo, 2018). In this perspective, the Italian debate on surrogacy is analysed as a process in which some actors are authorized to speak - political elites, religious institutions, moral entrepreneurs - while others, and particularly surrogates, are rendered silent. The paper engages with feminist scholarship on sex work movements (Berg et al, 2022; Hofstetter, 2023), which has emphasized on the necessity of including directly affected subjects in policy processes, to show and on the political implications of their absence from the discursive field. Methodologically, the study employs critical frame analysis (Lombardo et al. 2009; Verloo 2005) to examine three sets of documents: parliamentary debates and public hearings,; documents from civil society organizations;, and media coverage. This approach allows to identify how legitimacy to speak on surrogacy is distributed, and how exclusion is constructed discursively and institutionally. By situating the Italian case within broader literatures on morality politics (Ammaturo, 2020; Rubio Grundell, 2024), democratic backsliding (Haggard & Kaufman, 2021; Waldner & Lust, 2018), gender backlash (Faludi, 1991; Flood et al., 2021), and State reproductive governance (Randeria, 2024; Yuval-Davis, 1996), the paper argues that silencing operates across interconnected levels: 1) it restricts democratic participation, 2) narrows the range of legitimate political subjects, and 3) reinforces state control over reproductive lives and bodies. The findings contribute to understanding how the regulation of reproduction becomes a mechanism of de-democratization, linking local policy-making to wider dynamics of neoconservatism and gendered governance.