ROME – Conflict is churning both inside Italy and across Europe over a new plan by the Italian government to introduce pro-life consulters to publicly funded family planning clinics that issue the certificates women need to undergo an abortion.
Despite the controversy, so far the Italian bishops’ conference, known by its acronym of CEI, as well as most individual prelates, largely have remained silent, taking no position on the proposed measure, reports Crux.
A recent piece in the Italian newspaper Quotidiano Nazionale suggested that the bishops’ reticence may be related to tensions over the past decade between some of the country’s leading pro-life groups and the leadership of CEI, which is chosen by Pope Francis.
The article recalled that in 2015, for example, the then-secretary of CEI, Bishop Nunzio Galantino, widely seen as a key Francis ally among the Italian bishops, distanced the Church from a “Family Day” rally planned by pro-life groups.
In interviews at the time, Galantino complained about the “style” of the groups behind the rally, a reference which was understood to include concern that they were overly influenced by the approach of US pro-life organisations.
Those concerns are still current, in part because Pro Vita e Famiglia has acknowledged receiving roughly $100,000 in funding from the US pro-life group Heartbeat International.
Under Pope Francis, the new leadership of the Italian bishops’ conference takes a dim view of groups that seem to take their cues from what some deem as aggressive pro-life organisations based in the US.
The current row over abortion in Italy centres on an amendment to a new health care package proposed by the government of conservative Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, which would allow the country’s twenty regions to decide whether to include pro-life groups among the resources available to publicly funded family planning clinics, drawing in part on new funds from the EU’s post-Covid recovery package.
Abortion has been legal in Italy since 1978 during the first 90 days of pregnancy for virtually any reason, and afterwards in the case either of threats to the health of the mother or developmental issues with the unborn child.
A woman wishing an abortion must first obtain a certificate attesting to the state of her pregnancy, which can come from her publicly-funded general practitioner, a private physician or a family planning clinic.
The most visible and influential pro-life organisation in Italy is known as Pro Vita e Famiglia, which has called for women seeking an abortion certificate to first be required to see the foetus on a ultrasound and to hear its heartbeat – proposals similar to those found in US states such as Texas.
The move by the Meloni government has drawn strong protests from Italy’s left-wing political opposition. One leading lawmaker from the Democratic Party compared allowing pro-life groups into abortion clinics to turning over hospital administration to the sorts of forces against vaccinations, so-called “no-vax” groups, while another accused Meloni’s coalition of a “patriarchal and obscurantist vision, seeking every time to erode women’s rights”.
On 17 April, a member of parliament named Gilda Sportiello, representing the populist liberal Five Stars Movement, took to the floor to reveal that she’d had an abortion 14 years ago, insisting that “no woman who wants to interrupt her pregnancy should feel attacked by the state”.
Maurizio Landini, leader of Italy’s largest trade union, has said the measure “seeks to impede women from making decisions about their own bodies”.
“We’re looking at a very dangerous regression,” Landini said. “There’s a logic of command and control.”
The proposal has also drawn international criticism, including from Spain’s Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo García, who objected on the social media platform X.
“Allowing organised pressures against women who wish to interrupt a pregnancy means undermining a right recognised by law,” Redondo wrote. Though she did not specify which law she had in mind, the European Parliament has been voting on whether to include access to abortion in its Charter of Fundamental Rights.
“This is a strategy of the far right – threatening to take away rights, in order to put the brakes on equality between women and men,” Redondo wrote.
Eugenia Roccella, Meloni’s Minister for the Family, insisted that the amendment does no more than apply Italy’s original 1978 abortion law, which lists among the goals of family planning clinics that of “helping to overcome the factors which might lead the woman to have her pregnancy terminated”.
The Vatican has now belatedly entered the fray in a way perceived as at least indirectly supportive of the proposal, reports Crux.
On 20 April, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, broke the previous silence in comments to reporters on the sidelines of a conference at Rome’s Pontifical Urban University about the administration of ecclesiastical goods.
Asked for a comment on the government’s family planning clinic proposal, Parolin said he didn’t want to enter into the “technical details” of the proposal. Nevertheless, he did comment on its substance.
“We’re in favour of life, and also of all those instruments which can help to affirm the right to life, above all for women who find themselves in difficulty,” Parolin said.
For most Italian observers, the comment was taken as a show of support for the government proposal: “The Vatican blesses the anti-abortion measure,” was how the newspaper Il Giornale headlined its coverage.
Not only does the Italian debate come shortly after the Vatican issued the document Dignitas Infinita, which termed abortion a “grave and deplorable” practice, but it’s also unfolding at the same time that the European parliament recently voted to include access to abortion in the EU Charter of Fundamental Human Rights.
While 336 parliamentarians voted in favour and 163 opposed, it likely will not have any immediate affect since all 27 member states of the EU would have to approve an amendment to the charter, and both Poland and Malta have already signalled they won’t do so in this case.
The Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) has warned EU politicians that abortion can never be a fundamental right. Decrying the EU proposition, and the imposing ideologies surrounding it, the European Bishops have reaffirmed that a human being, in any situation and at every stage of development, is always sacred and inviolable.
The bishops warn that once this conviction disappears – as it would with the inclusion of the right to abortion – so do solid and lasting foundations for the defence of human rights.
The new Italian bill, was passed by Italy’s Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of parliament, on 16 April, and is expected to be approved by the Senate.
Photo: An Italian pro-life protestor with a sign reading, “No to abortion: Hands off children.” (Credit: Vatican Media, via Crux.)
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