Paper short abstract:

This paper presents the case of Italians facing cross-border reproductive care as a response to a law forbidding gamete and embryo donation. It analyses people's perception of reproductive needs and rights as well as their emotional and practical reactions to a restrictive national legal framework.

Paper long abstract:

The wish to pursuit one's reproductive project by recurring to donated gametes coincides for Italians with the need to consider crossing borders as the only practicable way, given that the Italian law concerning assited reproduction forbids gamete and embryo donation. The very experience of assisted reproductive treatments brings about a number of axieties and uncertainities that have been largely explored by the literature. The investigation of the specific case of Italians experiencing cross-border reproductive care (CBRC) allows a futher insight into people's perception of reproductive needs and rights as well as into people's emotional and practical reactions to a restrictive national legal framework. Drawing on fieldwork among CBRC Italian patients, this paper aims at exploring, among others: the feelings that emerge with the decision of overcoming local restriction to get treatments abroad; the dilemmas of the destination choice; the concerns about both geographic and symbolic distance of the place where people will be treated; the incertitude of the outcome and the need to allocate some budget to this adventure and possible further attempts; people's imaginaries and feelings about foreign doctors, protocols and substances; and incertitude about legal and social consequences of their acts. The paper will finally investigate how people mingle all these feelings with their intention to accomplish their reproductive project and which practices accompany this emotional experience.