Italy to allow anti-abortion activists into clinics to appeal to pregnant women
Italy has passed a law that will allow anti-abortion activists into clinics to appeal to pregnant women, in a win for its pro-life prime minister.
The Senate, where the hard-Right government has a majority, voted 95-68, giving final approval to legislation allowing anti-abortion groups access to women considering ending their pregnancies.
The law, already passed by the lower Chamber of Deputies, allows regions to permit groups “with a qualified experience supporting motherhood” to have access to public support centres where women who are considering abortions go to receive counselling.
For the Left-wing opposition, the law chips away at abortion rights that opponents had warned would follow Giorgia Meloni’s 2022 election.
The overwhelmingly Catholic country legalised abortion 46 years ago.
Cecilia D’Elia, a Democratic Party senator, said at a protest this week against the legislation: “The government should realise that they keep saying they absolutely do not want to boycott or touch Law 194 but the truth is that the right-wing opposes women’s reproductive autonomy, fears women’s choices regarding motherhood, sexuality, and abortion.”
Under the 1978 law, Italy allows abortion on request in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy or later if a woman’s health or life is in danger. It provides for publicly funded counselling centres to advise pregnant women of their rights and services offered if they want to terminate the pregnancies.
Easy access to abortion is not always guaranteed. The law allows health care personnel to register as conscientious objectors and refuse to perform abortions and many have – meaning women sometimes have to travel long distances to have the procedure.
Ms Meloni, who campaigned on a slogan of “God, fatherland and family”, has insisted she will not roll back the 1978 law and merely wants to implement it fully but she has also prioritised encouraging women to have babies to reverse Italy’s demographic crisis.
Italy’s birth rate, already one of the lowest in the world, has been falling steadily for about 15 years and reached a record low last year with 379,000 babies born.
Ms Meloni’s conservative forces, backed strongly by the Vatican, have mounted a campaign to encourage at least 500,000 births annually by 2033, a rate that demographers say is necessary to prevent the economy from collapsing under the weight of Italy’s ageing population.
Ms Meloni has called the Left-wing opposition to the proposed amendment “fake news”, recalling that Law 194 provides for measures to prevent abortions, which would include counselling pregnant women about alternatives. The amendment specifically allows anti-abortion groups, or groups “supporting motherhood”, to be among the volunteer groups that can work in the counselling centres.
“I think we have to guarantee a free choice,” Ms Meloni said recently. “And to guarantee a free choice you have to have all information and opportunities available. And that’s what the Law 194 provides.”
The new tensions over abortion in Italy come against the backdrop of developments elsewhere in Europe going somewhat in the opposite direction. France marked International Women’s Day by inscribing the guaranteed right to abortion into its constitution.
Last year, overwhelmingly Catholic Malta voted to ease the strictest abortion laws in the EU. Polish lawmakers moved forward with proposals to lift a near-total ban on abortion enacted by the country’s previous Right-wing government.
