Category: Italy

Abortion campaigners assault on conscience in Italy based on ideology, not facts

 “When the ideological fury collides with reality, sometimes the impact is very violent.”

LifeSite News

Hilary White

ROME, March 13, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The pro-life movement in Italy has come out swinging against an order by the Council of Europe to abolish the country’s legal protection for conscientious objectors against abortion. Gianfranco Amato, the head of the campaign group Giuristi per la Vita (Jurists for Life), said at a press conference yesterday that the clause in the abortion law 194, “remains the only form of defence against an unjust law.”

Amato said, “Freedom of thought, conscience and religion is one of the foundations of a democratic society.”

The committee’s decision came in response to a complaint, launched in November 2012 by International Planned Parenthood Federation European Network (IPPFEN) and an Italian labour union, claiming that Italian doctors were “abusing” the conscience protection clause in Law 194. IPPF made the complaint when the government announced in its annual statistics that between 70 and 90 percent of gynecologists in the country refuse to participate in abortion.

Some in the secular media are defending the decision of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Social Rights to uphold a complaint against the law, saying that it has created a “totalitarianism” of pro-life doctors who commit “psychological violence” against women who want abortions. The criticism comes as Italian media are publicizing the case of a woman who is claiming that two years ago she miscarried in a hospital bathroom after doctors refused to do an abortion. Valentina Pertini has launched a court case to review the law this week, aiming to add political pressure immediately following the Council of Europe committee’s non-binding decision.[Full Text]

Council of Europe committee attacks Italian law allowing doctors to refuse abortions

LifeSite News

Hilary White

ROME, March 10, 2014  (LifeSiteNews.com) – The International Planned Parenthood Federation has scored a major victory against conscientious objection laws in Italy at the Council of Europe. The council’s European Committee of Social Rights voted this weekend to uphold IPPF’s complaint against Italy that too many doctors are allowed to refuse to participate in abortion.

The complaint was launched in November 2012 by International Planned Parenthood Federation European Network (IPPFEN) claiming that Italian doctors were “abusing” the right, granted in Italy’s abortion law, not to be forced to commit abortions. It alleged that the Italian law is in “violation of the right to health … due to inadequate protection of the right to access procedures for the termination of pregnancy.”

The law, they said, “does not indicate the precise means through which hospitals and regional authorities are to guarantee the adequate presence of non-objecting medical personnel in all public hospitals, so as to always ensure the right of access to procedures for the termination of pregnancy.”

“Due to this lack in the normative framework, there exists an inadequate application of Law no. 194 of 1978, as demonstrated by the facts relating to practice, which in turn compromises the rights to life, health and self-determination of women seeking to terminate a pregnancy.” [Full Text]

Majority of Italian obstetricians refuse to perform abortions

According to a report from the Italian Ministry of Health, the abortion rate has continued to drop in the country, a trend evident since 1982.  There has also been an increase in conscientious objection to abortion among health care workers.  In Campania, almost 90% of gynaecologists refuse to perform the procedure, and the rate for all of southern Italy is about 80%.

In response, the Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL), a national labour union, has demanded that only physicians willing to perform abortions should be employed in the public health system.  However, the Ministry’s own statistics demonstrate that 95 percent of requested abortions are performed within three weeks,
while 90 percent are not considered medically urgent. Lawyer Giacomo Rocchi, also an Italian Supreme Court magistrate, went to Strasbourg to represent a number of associations in their defence of freedom of conscience.[LifeSite News]

 

 

Conscientious objection a controversial issue in Italy’s abortion regime

RTE News European Blog

It may come as a surprise, but a relatively liberal abortion regime has existed in Italy since 1978. . . . The law provides for abortion up to 12 weeks into the pregnancy, and up to 23 weeks if there are foetal abnormalities. . .  But Law 194 is back in the news in Italy, and the reason may resonate with the debate in Ireland.

The law permits medical personnel to refuse to carry out abortions on conscientious grounds.

The numbers who are now doing so have risen so dramatically that groups in favour of the availability of abortion say the phenomenon is forcing Italian women to seek terminations abroad, or even to submit to illegal abortions in Italy. . . .[read on]