The idea of Fratelli d'Italia and President Meloni on Law 194 has always
been clear. "Full application of the law on the interruption ofpregnancy" and Meloni has repeatedly reiterated "I do not intend to
abolish Law 194 and I want to apply it in its entirety". ---- She has
actually kept her word because there is no need to touch the law to deny
the right to abortion as it is enough to build increasingly stringent
conditions around it that make resorting to the interruption of
pregnancy increasingly difficult if not impossible. ---- Law 194 was
approved in 1978 and effectively represented a conquest for Italian
women. It was a conquest that was the result of a long work by feminist
groups and networks, but also of a compromise that was necessary with
the Catholic movements and with the politics of that time.The result was
a law that contained contradictory and dangerous elements that over time
have demonstrated the ease with which anti-abortion movements were able
to attack it and make it difficult to implement.
First of all, the presence of conscientious objection, which, if it
could have made sense in those years because it guaranteed medical
personnel who found themselves working in public facilities but were
anti-abortion for ethical and/or religious reasons, to be exempted from
that practice, today it should be abolished because those who choose to
graduate in gynecology and decide to work within the public service, do
so knowing that they will also have to face the practice of terminating
a pregnancy, given that the law has been in force for over 46 years.
But there is another reason that makes this law problematic and it is
the very vision that it has of abortion that is seen not as a right but
as a concession, in fact the law completely lacks the component of
self-determination that makes a woman say that she chooses abortion
because she does not want to become a mother beyond the psychological,
social, economic reasons that are those required by the law and that,
unfortunately, have been the Trojan horse through which the entrance
into the counseling centers of the anti-abortion networks and pro-life
movements has been allowed.
Surely the objective of this right would be to cancel outright the 194
for its own ideological vocation and relationships with forces that are
openly anti-abortion, Italian and otherwise (just think of the political
closeness of President Meloni with Orban, with Vox, with Trump all
openly against the right to abortion and women's self-determination)
however it is also true that it has to deal with a strong negative
reaction from the electorate, even within the right. In fact, a 2024
IPSOE survey shows that 73% of the population supports the legality of
abortion. For this reason, a head-on clash is discouraged and replaced
by complex and pincer maneuvers to approach the objective.
This strategy is certainly inspired by what has already been done by the
Hungarian government of our friend Orban, who inserted into the
constitution the principle that "the life of the fetus is protected from
the moment of its conception", but since the logical consequence of the
article should be the prohibition of abortion, which would provoke
strong opposition among the electorate, especially the female one, it
is stated that the government is not planning to change the law because
it is not the law that needs to be changed but the mentality and
education which, coincidentally, essentially consists of "education for
family life" conveying an idea of woman who finds fulfillment only
within the family.
Coincidentally, the same strategy is being implemented by this
government when it claims not to want to touch 194 but at the same time
government officials have proposed much more restrictive measures
ranging from granting full legal rights to the embryo from the moment of
conception, to the obligation to listen to the fetal heartbeat, to the
inclusion of "pro-life" associations in counseling centers. This
proposal became law thanks to an amendment to the PNRR decree approved
on April 23.
And all this while France includes the right to abortion in the
constitution and the European Union votes to include this right in its
own Constitutional Charter.
Obviously, measures such as listening to the fetal heartbeat and the
inclusion of anti-abortion associations in counseling centers are
presented as necessary to guarantee a real informed choice (because it
is clear that women are not able to decide on their own, but need the
protection of various organizations and associations that open their
eyes!!!); in reality these interventions will only affect women's
decision-making autonomy, attempting to blame those who decide to avail
themselves of their right to abortion.
Much more binding and stringent would be the proposal to guarantee legal
rights from the moment of conception. In fact, in this way abortion
would be made illegal in practice because it would be equated with
murder, with inevitable consequences on the right to self-determination
of women with respect to the choice to abort.
Once again, what is completely ignored is the woman's body and the right
to choose if and when to become a mother and it is forgotten, or perhaps
ignored, that only when that intimate mother-child relationship given by
the acceptance of pregnancy is created, the embryo is transformed into a
concrete life project.
And this is why the final word on whether or not to choose abortion can
only be the woman's and the woman's alone.
But the relentlessness of the various anti-abortion movements also finds
more sophisticated ways to build consensus around their proposals and
one of these consists in operating a sort of conceptual entryism into
feminism and its watchwords. They adopt the language and concerns,
rework them and then reverse their meaning. The very title of "pro-life"
for a practice that erases women's life choices is a paradox, but they
also present themselves as defenders of women's health, to whom abortion
would impose "brutal violence" and therefore "strongly damaging" to
women's health, forgetting the physical, psychological costs and above
all the deaths caused by clandestine abortions.
Abortions were fatal and the law on the interruption of pregnancy was
also justified through the urgency of putting an end to the scourge of
clandestine abortions to which women, especially the most disadvantaged,
were subjected.
But today for the right-wing forces and the government what matters is
the ideological battle against women's free choice and any method that
could limit their autonomy is legitimate.
Such as the "listening room" inaugurated last May 30 inside the
Sant'Anna hospital in Turin. A place where the so-called "pro-life
movements" will have the opportunity to intercept women who want to
terminate their pregnancy and convince them not to abort with offers of
layettes, diapers, cribs, up to financial aid. The two levers on which
to focus are clear: on the one hand charity, on the other the sense of
guilt, shamefully exploiting what is one of the most delicate moments in
a woman's life. Faced with these facts that are a real attack, if not on
law 194, certainly on the right of every woman to decide on her own body
and therefore on her freedom of choice, it is necessary to keep
attention high, put the dignity of women back at the center, relaunch a
battle so that the right to abortion is truly guaranteed, rejecting any
attempt to limit its accessibility for all, through forms of women's
mobilization. Without forgetting to pay particular attention to the most
vulnerable groups such as migrants, for whom the situation is even more
difficult because online information is never translated and there are
no mediators in health facilities, or like all those women who, finding
themselves in more disadvantaged economic and social conditions, are
more exposed to what can only be defined as a real neo-obscurantist
attack against women and their right to self-determination.
Women are the only ones who can choose what to do with their own bodies
and we must not stop being vigilant so that this right is respected.
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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