For Italian women, having an abortion is already an obstacle course. This could become almost mission impossible with the amendment carried by Giorgia Meloni’s far right last week. If the maximum date for performing an abortion in Italy is set at approximately 12 weeks of pregnancy, i.e. average delivery time in Europewomen must obtain a medical certificate, refused by 63% of doctors.
They must also have a reflection period of seven days, and go through an “advice center”, designed to make the applicants give up. And this is where the text proposed by Lorenzo Malagola, deputy of the Fratelli d’Italia party, the Prime Minister’s party, comes into play. It implies that these structures can rely specifically on associations with “qualified experience in maternity support”.
“Fourteen years ago, I chose to abort”
A subtle change, but which would openly allow anti-abortion associations to enter these clinics according to opponents of the text. During the campaign for the legislative elections in 2022, Lorenzo Malagola had also promised in the magazine Pro Vita & Famiglia that Fratelli d’Italia would support associations opposed to abortion.
In the Chamber of Deputies, the opposition tried to fight the text, from the centrists of Azione to the 5 Star Movement (M5S) via the center-left Democratic Party. M5S MP Gilda Sportiello raged against the far right. “You had this amendment defended by a man who in the Assembly declared: “We give women the opportunity of life”. But what are we talking about? It is us, the women who choose what we want in our lives, whether it is to be a mother or not to be a mother,” she denounces.
“Fourteen years ago, I chose to abort,” she also confides, claiming to feel “neither guilty nor ashamed” today. “Do you know why I say it here, in the highest place of democratic representation in our country? This country where we still have trouble pronouncing the word abortion today? Because I would like no one who, at this moment, would like to have an abortion to feel attacked by this State,” she criticizes.
For its part, Giorgia Meloni’s party refuses to call into question Law 194, which has protected and regulated the right to abortion since 1978. “The objective is to offer, at no cost to the State, the possibility reflection, as provided for by law,” assures Fabio Rampelli, vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies.