Since learning she was pregnant, Chiara Mancini no longer has any doubts. I didn’t want to move forward. She called a friend and asked for advice on what action to take. She went to the public family planning center near her home and discovered that the nearest hospital that provided abortions was in a mountain town 45 minutes away by car, two hours by public transport. common. A place I would have to go to twice for previous exams and once on the day of the procedure. At the hospital in his town, Chieti, in Abruzzo, this was not possible. There, as in other provinces in this region of central Italy, 90% of the staff are conscientious objectors.
“In the center, they were very formal, I would almost say cold, but on the one hand I appreciated it. Everything went well until the visit with the anesthesiologist arrived. He started by asking me my age. I was 36 years old then. He kept asking me, “Do you have any other children?” No? And then why do you want to abort? I explained to him that I didn’t want children. “Well, but you have to think about it carefully.” And there she began a long explanation about the sanctity of life… I interrupted her a little abruptly, telling her that it was my business, that the decision was mine and that she had already been taken,” Mancini recalls, as he examines his medical history documents, which he calmly pulls out of a cardboard folder on the kitchen table of his Chieti home.
“It was an intrusion, although at the time I didn’t care about his judgment. I had chosen and I knew what I was doing, but another person in my place, perhaps without as much conviction, more fragile, would have had a very bad time. It was something really strong. It’s not easy to hear these things in these circumstances,” he adds, as a veil of sadness clouds his bright, dark green eyes.
However, looking back and listening to the stories of other women who have gone through an odyssey to terminate their pregnancies, the first thing that comes to mind is that “it could have been much worse”, in a country where feminist groups and large sectors of the civil society movement denounce the progressive but systematic erosion of the right to abortion. An erosion which, they regret, has accelerated since the arrival of Giorgia Meloni to the Government.
The far-right leader campaigned two years ago, before the legislative elections which brought her to power, promising that she was not going to “touch 194”, the law which has governed the law since 1978. access to voluntary termination of pregnancy.
After recounting in her biography her mother’s decision not to have an abortion, as she had planned when she became pregnant, she always repeatedly said that she did not want to change this rule but rather “the apply in its entirety”. “, in the part which speaks of “prevention” and “social protection of maternity”. For associations defending the right to choose and women’s rights, this in reality translates into manipulation of the law through “gray areas” that the text contains since its approval 46 years ago, the result of a compromise found after two years of parliamentary debate.
The “gray areas” of the law
“It was a law that we didn’t like because it’s a state law on abortion, where the state decides. In fact, the freedom is not total,” comments Tiziana Antonucci, social operator of a center in Ascoli Piceno, in the Marche region, opened in 1974 by the Italian Association for Demographic Education (AIED). The organization was founded, among others, by the Partigian the anti-fascist and one of the fathers of the Italian Constitution, Piero Calamandrei, first demanded the repeal of an article of the penal code, inherited from the fascist era, in which the distribution of contraceptive methods was punishable by ‘imprisonment.
“Law 194 forces women to obtain an abortion certificate and wait a week to think about it, because you are stupid and don’t know what you are doing…” comments Antonucci in a long telephone conversation in which he explains how In these “gray zones”, the right has been undermined, starting with its own region, the Marches, one of the first conquered by the Brothers of Italy and which has become a “model” of restrictions on access to abortion and a “laboratory” of the Meloni party.
In the region, 71% of gynecologists are objectors, exceeding the already very high national average (63.4%), according to the latest data from the Italian Ministry of Health, collected in a report published in mid-September by the NGO section Italian Doctors. of the World. “The situation [en las Marcas] However, it is not homogeneous and there are places where the opposition reaches 100%,” the document reads. “And in these situations, the region does not intervene even though it is its responsibility to ensure compliance with the law,” specifies Antonucci.
One of the first measures approved by the new ultra administration in this territory of central Italy was, he said, to repeal the agreement that the AIED center had with a hospital so that, given the difficulties of access to abortion in other hospital centers, it would facilitate contact and support for women who need it. “We received notification on December 29, 2022 that the convention was ending and that we had time until February to handle the pending nominations,” Antonucci recalls.
Limitations of pharmacological abortion
At that time, the region had long turned a deaf ear to a 2020 ministerial decree that it had helped promote with gynecologists in the region, given the restrictions on access to hospitals during the pandemic: the decree authorized the Pharmacological abortion, with the abortion pill known as RU486, also in health centers and not only in hospitals, and has extended the supply time from seven to nine weeks. Four years later, the new lines dictated by the ministry are still not applied in the Marches, nor in other regions governed mainly by the right.
“In practice, this means that many women cannot access pharmacological abortion, because, given the week of reflection imposed by law and the need for a certificate, some already arrive too late,” explains gynecologist Cristina Conti, who operates in the region. and regrets that over the years the resources of family clinics, as health centers dedicated to prevention and women’s health are called in Italy, have family planning and advice on contraceptive methods.
“We must fight every day for the application of a law which dates from 1978 and which should be something already assumed. You work in such a polarized environment that, in a way, you almost end up having to be an activist,” reflects Conti, who acknowledges that in many cases, especially when deadlines are very tight, access to right to abortion is entrusted to the knowledge of the territory by professionals like them. “Knowing where non-opposing staff are, being able to give precise instructions, knowing that the woman who goes to this hospital will not encounter someone who will force her to undergo yet another unnecessary ultrasound or offer to listen to the beats from the heart… We are obliged to deal to avoid these low blows, to prevent women from suffering violence for their right to choose,” she adds.
Although the regional administration has so far resisted enforcing guidelines on pharmacological abortion, it has paved the way for a greater role for religious and pro-life organizations. The data obtained after a request for transparency, presented by the regional representative of the Democratic Party, Manuela Bora, and the activist of the Pro-Choice network, Marte Manca, reveal that the regional government granted 63,000 euros to the regional consultation federation in 2021. by Christian inspiration.
Anti-abortion associations in health centers
Today the region is preparing to adopt the measure approved by the Meloni government last April, with an amendment to the law for the implementation of the Resilience and Recovery Plan for the use of post-pandemic European funds: provision in public health centers of the presence of anti-abortion associations, defined as organizations with “qualified experience in maternity support”.
The standard is based on article 2 of the same law 194, which provides that centers can count on “the voluntary collaboration of appropriate basic social training and voluntary associations, which can help difficult maternity wards after childbirth “.
The Médecins du Monde report emphasizes that, precisely thanks to this article, the pro-abortion movements had already entered, in various ways, family planning centers and also hospitals, as happened recently in a hospital in Turin, in the north of Italy, with the signing of an agreement, promoted by the regional advisor for Social Policies, of the Brothers of Italy, with the local section of Movimento per la Vita, an association Catholic-inspired anti-abortion.
“That the associations pro-life being able to access family offices is an affront to the professionalism of those of us who work there,” says Conti.
Professionals also deplore the distortions caused by high objection rates. As in Abruzzo, the second region after Sicily, in number of objecting doctors, 84%. “Now there are three of us. There were times, before they suspended the service for organizational reasons, when I was alone,” explains Carolina Iannantuono, gynecologist at Lanciano hospital, where since last June the termination of pregnancy is practiced again, twice a week. “All my shifts were dedicated to this also on a professional level, it becomes a very heavy burden, it takes away your motivation because we, as gynecologists, do a lot of things and. , on the other hand, being the only non-objecting professional, you have no other choice. There are colleagues who sometimes choose to be objectors not for ideological reasons but because of the burden that it represents. not to be in the current situation.
“Rage and frustration”
In a context of growing pressure, Tiziana Antonucci does not hesitate to affirm that “in Italy, institutional violence is exercised on the question of abortion”. To protest against this situation, and on the occasion of the World Day of Action for Legal and Safe Abortion, several demonstrations have been called this Saturday in different Italian cities.
“What I feel now when I read about what is happening is anger and frustration. I really don’t understand the need for things like pro-life associations’ access to public hospitals,” says Chiara Mancini. “And I get angry thinking about so many women who might find themselves in more difficult situations than mine. When the anesthesiologist gave me this 15-minute lecture, I metabolized it because my goal was to get it over with as quickly as possible. But it remains a form of violence.
