Category: Italy

Council of Europe raps Italy over difficulty in obtaining abortions

Reuters

Isla Binnie, Steve Scherer

ROME (Reuters) – Women’s rights are being violated in Italy by the serious difficulties they face in trying to obtain safe abortions due to many doctors refusing to carry out the procedure, the Council of Europe said on Monday.

Terminating pregnancies has been legal in Italy since 1978, but the council’s social rights committee found that the situation in Italy violated both the women’s right to protection of health and the doctors’ right to dignity at work.

In a significant number of Italian hospitals, even if a gynecology unit exists, there are no or very few doctors who do not object to performing abortions, the committee said. . . [Full text]

 

Seven in 10 Italian gynaecologists refuse to carry out abortions

Figure has risen from 59% in 2005 and has been accompanied by increase in reported miscarriages

The Guardian

Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Pamela Duncan, Alberto Nardelli, Delphine Robineau

Seven in 10 Italian gynaecologists refuse to carry out abortions on the grounds of conscientious objection, according to official government figures.

The rise – which saw the proportion of those objecting go from 59% in 2005 to 70% in 2013 – has been accompanied by a steady increase in reported miscarriages, trends that some doctors say are linked. They suggest more women are seeking abortions in clinics that are not legally providing them or are inducing abortions themselves.

“Women are getting abortions, but doing it illegally, because we know there are so many who are arriving at our clinic who have a quote-unquote spontaneous abortion [or miscarriage]. They probably took a pill … we understand [these to be an] illegal abortion,” said Silvana Agatone, a gynaecologist in Rome.  .  .[Full text]

Italian bill would fund ‘sex assistants’ for the disabled

LifeSite News

Hilary White

ROME – Italy’s Senate is considered a bill introduced in April that would mandate the government to offer “sexual assistants” to people with physical, mental or cognitive disabilities.

The bill, which would bring Italy in line with other EU countries, proposes that these “assistants” should be male and female professional “sex workers” who would help their clients gain “erotic, sensual or sexual experience and better address their internal energies” in order to help them “discharge dysfunctional feelings of anger and aggression.”

Disabled Italians will be eligible for government-funded “sex assistants” through the Ministry of Health. They must have reached the age of majority, have completed the “compulsory education” program, signed a code of conduct, and be certified as to their “psycho-sexual suitability” by the local health authority. . . [Full text]

Top employment strategies for discouraging conscientious objection

Bioedge

Xavier Symons

In a recent Journal of Medical Ethics article, controversial bioethicist Francesca Minerva argues for limiting the number of conscientious objectors in Italian hospitals.

Minerva asserts that conscientious objection “prevents access to certain treatments”, and proposes that we set up disincentives for objectors in hospitals. The proposed solutions include offering higher salaries for non-objectors and establishing ‘conscientious objector quotas’. She concludes:

When conscience-related issues prevent access to a certain treatment, such as abortion in Italy, the public health system, or the Ministry of Health in this case, has to find a solution that safeguards and protects the health of the patients as a priority.

In a response to Minerva, Oxford theologian and ethicist Roger Trigg argues that conscientious objection is a necessary part of the practice of medicine:

Once we discount conscientious moral reasoning, medicine is reduced to a technical issue about procedures, without any regard to their effect on the greater human good.

In the case of abortion, he suggests that high rates of conscientious objection might indicate a need to reconsider the original policy:

One problem with abortion is that for the most part those making the political decision are not those who have to implement the policy. If the latter object in sufficiently high numbers to make the policy hard to implement, that might be a reason for assuming there could be something wrong with what was being proposed.

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Italian Doctors Abort a Law

Interpress Service News Agency

Silvia Giannelli

ROME, Apr 5 2014 (IPS) – Two out of three doctors in Italy are ‘conscientious objectors’ to abortion, according to new data. The Italian Ministry of Health reveals that in 2011, 69.3 percent of doctors refused to carry out abortions, with peaks of over 85 percent in some regions.

In the face of such numbers, the ruling of the European Committee of Social Rights of the Council of Europe against Italy earlier this month over a complaint for violating the right to protection of health came as no surprise.

“The Italian situation really worries us, and this is why we filed the complaint,” Irene Donadio, advocacy officer at the International Planned Parenthood Federation European Network (IPPF_EN) told IPS. “We believe that there is a problem with the functioning and application of the abortion law, which, in fact, would be a good law but is often violated.

“We acknowledge the fact that the right to conscientious objection is included in the same law, but the right of women to access a service that is legal and fundamental for their health needs to be respected as much as this right.” [Full Text]