Sunday September 25, Italy passed the weapon to the extreme right. With 26% of the vote, Giorgia Meloni and her Fratelli d’Italia party proudly won the legislative elections. In her parliamentary majority, she will be accompanied by the entire “centre-right” coalition formed with the Lega of Matteo Salvini (8.8%) and Forza Italia of Silvio Berlusconi (8.1%). In all, the group, which includes other small parties, obtained 43.8% of the vote.
During the short electoral campaign, Giorgia Meloni was able to bring Italians together around her conservative positions, notably marked by an ambient euroscepticism and around family values. “God, family, homeland”, testifies to its campaign slogan. But will this coming to power be synonymous with a step back on social rights?
Many Italians fear the possible end of the right to abortion. An idea that, according to some Internet users, would in fact be orchestrated by “Italian and international newspapers and many well-known accounts on social networks”, said Monday the Occidentis media on Twitter. “If we read the electoral program carefully, we realize that the party simply wishes to multiply the financial and social solutions to allow women, if they wish, to keep their children”. According to this publication, its only goal would be to raise the birth rate curve, “down 31% compared to 2008”. So, what does Giorgia Meloni really think about the right to abortion? 20 minutes make the point.
FAKE OFF
To begin with, it is good to go back a little in time to better understand the right to abortion in Italy. Law 194, which legalizes it, was passed in 1978, three years after France. Since that date, Italian women can interrupt their pregnancy for up to twelve weeks. Forty-seven years later, after the election of Giorgia Meloni, will this right be jeopardized – as recently in the United States and earlier in Poland?
During the summer, the campaign of the Fratelli d’Italia candidate was punctuated by a policy “in support of the birth rate and the family”. Several of its proposals revolve around these themes: the reduction of VAT on products and services for early childhood, the gradual introduction of the family quotient and free crèches. Its program does not, strictly speaking, mention the end of the right to abortion. Giorgia Meloni prefers not to worry voters and relies on the “prevention” of abortion, with the highlighting of options to avoid it.
Alternatives?
In a given interview to the Italian media theUnione Sarda, Giorgia Meloni recalled that she did not want to change the law on abortion, before adding: “I would like to add rights that women who find themselves in a position to abort because they have no alternative , perhaps for economic reasons, may have this alternative,” she added. This would translate, for example, into financial aid for women living in poverty, in order to prevent them from terminating their pregnancies. On several occasions, during her campaign, the candidate has also described abortion as a “defeat”.
Only here, in Italy as elsewhere, the right to abortion also depends on the doctors who could – according to the evolution of mentalities – be opposed more and more to the practice. This is already the case in the country, where several practitioners declare themselves as “conscientious objectors”. In 2019, the rate of gynecologists refusing abortion was already 67%, according to the Ministry of Health.
A birth crisis
It is also true that Italy is experiencing a demographic crisis of major importance. As the Occidentis publication explains, there has indeed been a 31% drop in the birth rate compared to 2008, below the threshold of 400,000 births in 2021, the lowest since the end of the Second World War. The fertility rate is 1.27 children per woman… the lowest score in the European Union.
But from there to imagine a link between this problem and an imminent disappearance of abortion [qui, de fait, augmenterait le nombre de naissances], Italy no doubt has some respite ahead of it. Only, History has already proven it, social achievements are not eternal… even if it is not specified in the programs.