Abortion incident reveals fragility of women’s rights

Claudia Martinuzzi Guest Columnist

There is a saying in Italian that goes “vedi Napoli e poi muori.” It translates to “see Naples and die,” referring to being overwhelmed by the beauty and uniqueness of this gem of a city in southern Italy.
Unfortunately, 2008 has not been a good year for Naples so far. While January featured the literally mounting garbage crisis, February was marked by an even more disturbing incident: the confiscation of an aborted fetus by local authorities. This incident, along with others in both Italy and the United States, shows that women’s rights are still a crucial issue.

The event in Naples may seem absurd, but it is true. On Monday, Feb. 11, a 39 year-old woman named Silvana decided to terminate her 21-week pregnancy after tests revealed the fetus had significant abnormalities. When she returned to her bed from the operation room, still dazed from the anesthetic, she found police officers waiting for her. They had been alerted by an anonymous caller who suspected the procedure had been performed later in the pregnancy than the legal 24-week limit.
In an interview with newspaper La Repubblica, Silvana said, "They gave me the third degree: What had happened, why did I have an abortion, who was the father? They even asked me if I paid the doctors.”

After interrogating the woman, police confiscated the aborted fetus and took possession of her hospital chart.

The unfolding of this unfortunate event had two very tangible effects. First, it rekindled a bitter debate over abortion before the upcoming Italian parliamentary elections in April. This put the issue, as The New York Times pointed out, at the center of the electoral campaign. Abortion law has been a highly charged issue in Italy since 1978, when first trimester abortions were legalized. This decision was later upheld by a 1981 referendum following a battle with the Vatican.

Today, the Naples controversy has drawn attention to the recent efforts of prominent conservative journalist Guliano Ferrara (an ex-minister and dear friend of former Prime Minister Berlusconi) in campaigning for a universal moratorium on abortion and running for Parliament on a strong anti-abortion agenda.

What’s interesting is the lack of female voices in this newly reopened debate. Although hundreds of women rallied in the streets of Rome and Naples in the days following the police interrogation of Silvana, this event reveals that the political system in Italy, as is the case in many other countries, remains largely a man’s game. Even Emma Bonino, a Radical Party leader (who claims she went into politics after having an illegal abortion), notes that the problem for women in Italy is getting power within the political parties, where it is typically negotiated among the usual group of men.

This unfortunate situation reminded me of a well-known poster circulated by the American Pro-Choice Public Education Project that reads: “77 percent of anti-abortion leaders are men. 100 percent of them will never be pregnant.”

Furthermore, these events have served as a reminder of how women experience seeking an abortion in Italy. A detailed report in the newspaper Corriere Della Sera reveals the “odyssey” that women go through in order to end a pregnancy. Women must access offices that are only open one hour a week, make countless trips to hospitals, endure long waiting lists and humiliating symbols such as the signs reading “termination of pregnancy” that are attached to patients’ hospital beds (a practice recently done away with at a Milanese hospital). These practices make getting an abortion in Italy an obstacle course that drives a growing number of women to seek treatment elsewhere, mainly in the U.K.

On the 35th anniversary of the pivotal Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, it is important to reflect on the rights of women in our society. Although we should certainly be celebrating the advances in recent history, Louise Melling, director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, noted that this “is also a time when our rights are in danger.” Both the partial-birth abortion ban in the United States and the situation in Italy show there is a lot of truth in a poster by the Pro-Choice Public Education Project saying: “Of all the things from the ’70s to make a comeback, there’s one we really hate to see.”