Abortion has been legal in Italy since 1978 but access to the procedure remains limited and can be fraught with difficulties.
Up to 69% of gynaecologists and 46% of anaesthetists refuse to carry out abortions on the grounds of conscience, according to Health Ministry data.
The issue is increasingly dominating politics, too.
Abortion repeatedly made headlines in September’s parliamentary elections, a process that elevated Giorgia Meloni to lead Italy’s most right-wing government since World War Two.
And although Meloni said she would not would not change Italy’s abortion laws, women’s rights campaigners fear new restrictions might follow.
Law 194 – the bill that guarantees a woman’s right to an abortion – has come under repeated attack over the years and advocates say it is vital to keep girls and women safe as the threat of repeal looms ever larger.
“We have a lot of rage, and we are going after them – the people who prevent women from having abortions – and we’re not doing it peacefully,” said Bianca Monteleone, a member of Objection Rejected, a Pisa-based abortion rights group.
HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT FOR WOMEN
Women were quick to take to the streets after the elections, with thousands descending on Rome’s central square a month into the new administration in a show of female force.
Their faces were daubed with pink glitter and their banners demanded that Italy “end the war on our bodies”.
Activist Eleonora Mizzoni said the existing law might well allow abortion – but women faced a wall of hostility accessing it.
“It’s the waiting times, making you listen to the heartbeat, priests on the wards, the doctors treating you like a murderer,” she said.
Her Objection Rejected collective has been mapping clinics that offer abortions – no official lists exist – and it also accompanies women on medical appointments to lend support.
They fear that the government will make it still harder to get an abortion, even if it doesn’t tinker with the actual law.
ABORTION LOTTERY
Law 194 lets health professionals opt out of performing abortions on grounds of conscience, a setup that operates in 22 European Union states.
Since the 1970s, the number of objectors in Italy grew from 59% of the total medical pool to 65% by 2020, with some regions reporting 83% of practitioners opting out.
Abortion activists said the stark regional differences created vastly unequal access, with the south most conservative.
Official data from 2020 shows less than 8% of doctors would terminate pregnancies in the regions of Abruzzo and Molise.
This meant few doctors performing abortions within the legal limit, pushing women to travel farther afield, often in haste.
All of which means the state can no longer guarantee a woman’s legal right to an abortion, activists say.
“Every time a civil right is denied, or restricted, it causes new inequalities,” Giorgia Serughetti, a professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca, said in emailed comments.
Indeed, economists say lack of access to abortion can curtail women’s education, limit work options and hit earnings.
Nor is Italy an outlier.
Poland outlawed abortion in almost all cases in 2021, and Hungary recently tightened its law, too.
“We see in many, many regions of the world there is an attempt to transform society and the rights we think we have and go back to the past,” said Irene Donadio of IPPF-Europe, an NGO dedicated to sexual and reproductive health.
RIPPLE EFFECT OF U.S. POLITICS
Nowhere does the battle loom bigger than the United States, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v Wade measure that guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion.
If the Supreme Court emboldened “pro-life” Americans, Monteleone worries that the hard-right Brothers of Italy party may be taking notes and will try to roll back rights in Italy.
In September, Senator Maurizio Gasparri proposed a bill to “protect the rights of the unborn” – a move that could reclassify abortion as murder.
Within the cabinet, Meloni nominated anti-abortion Eugenia Roccella as Minister for Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities; she recently said abortion was not a right.
Maria Rachele Ruia runs a “pro-life and family” association in Rome. For her, the law is no problem – she simply wants to create a world in which abortion is “unthinkable”.
Earlier this year, Ruia stepped aside from her day job to run for office with the Brothers of Italy party. She did not win but said plenty inside parliament will be championing her cause.
The Brothers of Italy would not comment on their agenda.
WOMEN AND DOCTORS BOTH AT RISK
A recent court case shows the dangers of limiting access to abortion – for medics, as well as for women.
Four doctors, all so-called conscientious objectors received suspended sentences for manslaughter in November after denying a 32-year-old woman a late abortion, which was legal as the pregnancy had put her life in danger.
Valentina Milluzzo was five months pregnant when she went into premature labour with twins in 2016.
After enduring one stillborn birth, the medics refused to abort her second foetus, and the woman died of septic shock.
“When a hospital decides to apply its own laws, and decide when a woman’s life is at risk or not, then you end up having people dying,” said Donadio of the IPPF-Europe NGO.
It echoes cases in Poland and Ireland where women died of complications during pregnancy due to a denial of care, showing how uneven abortion access is across Europe, said Donadio.
“It is heartbreaking knowing the consequences, because this is real oppression. You have such a huge impact on people’s lives.”
The abortion wars also reflect a misogynist mindset, said the Milan professor Serughetti, one that “stigmatises women as murderers, the other which pities them as victims of poverty.”
“Both have roots in a religion that strongly opposes women’s self-determination in reproductive matters, and which has much influence in Italian society and politics.”
via Reuters
