Italy: Thousands of Women Marched to Demand Pro-Choice Laws

Thousands of Italian women marched across the country Saturday, under the banner,  'My Body, My Choice'  to mark 40 years of the passing of the historic 1978 law, Law 194, which legalized abortion in a largely Catholic country. 

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The 194 law legalized the voluntary termination of pregnancy (VTP), however, the law, which has been criticized by women’s groups for restricting "self-determination", is being threatened by a growing far-right and anti-choice movement in the country as well as a neoliberal approach to the restructuring of the health system.

"Italian women’s battles over the last four decades show that any abortion law has to be founded on women’s freedom of choice — or it won’t work," Michela Pusterla, an Italian feminist involved in the Non una di meno movement, wrote Friday in Jacobin. 

"In Italy and elsewhere, as fascist and sexist anti-choice movements grow their presence in Parliaments and public hospitals, the fight for reproductive rights becomes larger than itself. It becomes a global fight for liberation; for another society based on autonomy and self-determination."

Per the 194 law, women can opt for voluntary termination only within the first 90 days when the continuation of pregnancy, childbirth, or maternity would result in a serious danger to their physical or mental health, whereas between the 12th and 20th week, a significant fetal abnormality must be present, posing a serious risk to the woman's mental or physical health, or there must be a danger to the woman's life if she continues with the pregnancy. Thereby, not guaranteeing women the right to self-determination as a woman cannot receive an abortion based on choice. 

Since the nature of the law was anti-choice, the Italian Radicals Party and the far-left Proletarian Democracy party (DP) that played major roles in the reproductive rights campaign, voted against the law.  

Nearly 40 years later, "some 70 percent of gynecologists in Italy don’t perform abortion. This number is on the rise, and in some regions where the figure stands at close to 90 percent, terminating a pregnancy can be as difficult as if it were illegal," Pusterla pointed out referring to the fact that the abortion law in Italy also gives doctors the right to refuse performing the procedure based on their personal views and opinions.

"Today, across the whole of Italy, only 1,408 gynecologists will perform the entire procedure. For this reason, illegal abortions are rising, especially among migrant women who are shut out of public health services. It is estimated at least twenty thousand illegal abortions are performed in Italy every year."