Criminalization of women’s choices on sexual health and reproduction: The case of abortion as war against women

From the interweaving of the logic that underlies the positive state law on abortion with the defensive arguments deployed during the strategic litigations, I will outline the main coordinates of the contemporary legal discourse on abortion, arguing that the strengthening of the punitive state intervention builds and disseminates stigma against women who voluntarily or involuntarily abort, stigma that inevitably produces a cultural withdrawal of society by undermining the effectiveness of policies pursued at national level for the prevention of male violence against women.