In the months leading up to Italy’s parliamentary elections, abortion has become a prominent issue on the election agenda. Former Conservative Premier Silvio Berlusconi, in the running for office, recently gave the United Nations a strong anti-choice message that a fetus should be protected “from conception until natural death.”
In December, popular conservative journalist Giuliano Ferrara proposed a moratorium on abortion in his conservative paper Il Foglio which was backed, unsurprisingly, by the Catholic Church. Interestingly the day before Ferrara published his views, the United Nations put forward a motion to instigate a moratorium on the death penalty. In his twisted logic, Ferrara argued that if the United Nations was backing a moratorium on the death penalty, they should support a moratorium on abortion as well, calling abortion the “supreme scandal of our time.” Ferrara is also planning on running for office on an anti-abortion platform. The Vatican has announced that it will hold a world tour to support the moratorium although as yet few details have been released. It is expected that this issue will be on the agenda during the Pope’s visit to the United Nations this April.
Abortion was legalized in Italy in 1978 for terminations until 12 weeks of pregnancy. After 12 weeks, abortion is only legal if the fetus proves a threat to a woman’s mental or physical health. Women in Italy already endure a number of barriers in accessing emergency contraception and abortion services. Due to the Italian Catholic Church’s stance on abortion, the abortion pill is not available to women as a legal option. Women already deal with extensive waiting lists for abortions – if they are fortunate enough to find doctors willing to operate, as the majority of doctors in Italy refuse to carry out abortions due to political reasons. As a result, poorer women risk their health by seeking the services of illegal midwives whereas those who are economically better off migrate to the United Kingdom to seek abortion services.
Earlier this month, Health Minister Livia Turco sided with thousands of Italian women and denounced police when they raided a Naples hospital moments after a 39-year old woman had aborted a 21-week old fetus due to serious genetic defects.
The parliamentary elections are being held April 13th and 14th .
image credit: here
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This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 11:41 pm and is filed under Activism, Controversy, Criticism, Feminism, Health, Justice, Legal, News, Police, Politics, Protest/Rally, Revolution. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Tragic — reminds me of George W cuz, if you don’t already know, what was the first bill he retracted when he got into power: Abortion. Deja Vu all over again.
The campaign to retract abortion is sadly gaining global momentum. As far as I know its received support from the Church in Korea, Sri Lanka and India. A national campaign to restrict abortion in Brasil was also started this month. Issues regardind abortion access and legislature in Poland, Estonia and Albania are also starting to surface. In Lithuania, the Parliament is trying to pass another resrictive abortion bill. With this new bill, even fetal defects and impairment will not be grounds enough for an abortion. If they are successful in passing the bill – which it sadly seems that they will – it will be the first time a European country has legislated on abortion in 15 years.
This is all very, very upsetting…