Italian politicians jumping on the bandwagon

Dumb politicians,


http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4558/

Abortion has leapt to the centre of electoral debate in Italy. Politicians are feverishly discussing it and demonstrations related to abortion have been held in several Italian cities. Ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, leader of the new centre-right People of Freedom alliance, has catapulted the abortion issue into the campaign for the General Election, due to be held on 13-14 April.

Traditionally, the abortion issue does not feature in Italian elections. But on Monday 11 February, Berlusconi called for a United Nations moratorium on pregnancy terminations similar to its recent non-binding resolution on the death penalty. ‘I think that recognising the right to life from conception to natural death is a principle that the UN could make its own, just as it did with the moratorium on the death penalty’, Berlusconi told the weekly magazine Tempi.


The potential criminalisation of Italian women undergoing abortions is equally worrying. On Monday 11 February, police officers raided a hospital in Naples following an anonymous phone call allegedly claiming that an ‘infanticide’ was underway (7). The police even took away the fetus to check it was not aborted after the legal time period. The woman, known only by her first name ‘Silvana’, initially wanted to give birth. But she decided to have an abortion after discovering that the fetus was afflicted by Klinefelter Syndrome, which can lead to severe mental handicap; she felt it would have been a struggle to bring up a seriously disabled child as a single mother. The abortion was carried out after 21 weeks, well within the existing legal time limit of 24 weeks. Nevertheless, the woman was met by a police officer for questioning after she left the operating theatre, reportedly while still under the effects of anaesthesia. Following police investigations, no prosecution is being sought in relation to Silvana’s case. But that did not stop Ferrara from passing judgement: ‘A baby was killed because it had an illness. I call that eugenics.’

This Naples incident and the debate about abortion led to a thousand pro-choice demonstrators gathering in Bologna, and hundreds in Rome, Milan and Naples, on 14 February. The leading liberal Italian newspaper La Repubblica compared these demonstrations to the 1970s women’s movement that helped to introduce the 194 abortion law. Many protesters stressed how important it is for a woman to have personal control over her body. ‘We are here to say that decisions concerning a woman’s body must remain in her hands always’, stated women from the Italian women’s association, UDI, as they marched in Rome. Others expressed their personal sympathy with the treatment of the woman in Naples. ‘Silvana, we’re all with you’, said placards on the Roman protests.

Abortion has become a matter for individual posturing by politicians in the run-up to April’s elections, rather than a political issue for party programmes. The absence of politics from the electoral debate about abortion means significant reform of existing abortion legislation is highly unlikely. But the manipulation of the abortion issue by politicians could have serious consequences for women like Silvana.

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