Since Italy adopted Law 194 in 1978, abortion has been available within 90 days of pregnancy to all Italian women free of charge.
At the same time, the law allows health professionals to assert their right to refuse to perform or participate in an abortion if they so choose.
Nevertheless, pro-abortion activists are not appeased. They demand that abortions be legal up to birth without exception. The international abortion lobby has repeatedly attempted to expand and revise the law, targeting especially the right of conscientious objections on the part of healthcare professionals, but to date those efforts have failed.
Thus thwarted, Italy’s feminists have resorted to a loophole in the system by heavily promoting pharmacological abortion – more specifically, the deadly Ru486 pill. The pill is difficult to obtain, they insist, and they have made that difficulty a target of their efforts.
Doctors of the World, a self-defined international health and human rights organization, has now launched “The Impossible Pill,” calling on all women to join the “Do It Yourself” movement and circumvent the problems posed by the widespread claim of conscientious objection.
Doctors of the World boasts of its efforts to “fight for universal healthcare.” The organization recently published a 40-page report in Italian entitled “Pharmacological abortion in Italy: between delays, opposition, and international guidelines.” The report laments that “access to the abortion pill in Italy is an obstacle course.”
What’s the major obstacle? The document complains that, as of 2020, 64.6% of Italian gynecologists were registered as conscientious objectors, as well as 44.6% of anesthetists, 36.2% of non-medical staff, and 14% of counseling staff.
Even though abortion has been legal in Italy for 40 years, feminists still complain that access to abortion and the abortion pill is not guaranteed equally throughout the country, particularly due to the high rates of conscientious objection in some regions. The report makes the claim that regional inequalities and difficulties in access to “medicated abortion” (i.e. Ru486) are even more pronounced than the obstacles to accessing surgical abortion in the country.
According to the report, the most concentrated regions of conscientious objectors were found in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano at 84.5%, Abruzzo at 83.8%, Molise at 82.2%, and Sicily at 81.6%. The report goes on to share updated information gathered from 2022 which indicates that, in 22 healthcare and counseling centers in Italy, the percentage of conscientious objectors among all the health personnel was 100%, while in 72 healthcare facilities, it was 80-100%. In addition, there were 18 hospitals in the country where 100% of gynecologists were reported to be registered as conscientious objectors.
“The Impossible Pill” campaign denounces Italy’s refusal to comply with World Health Organization (WHO) directives regarding “the Pill.” Those directives state that self-assessment of eligibility, self-administration of medication, and self-assessment of abortion success could be carried out independently of any oversight, up to the 12th week of gestation, allowing only the guidance of healthcare personnel.
Popular comedian Laura Formenti, the Italian celebrity whose endorsement is the face of the campaign, traversed Italy all the way from Sicily to the top of Mont Blanc to “denounce the difficulties in accessing medical abortion… and how far Italy is from the WHO directives.”
Formenti met with feminist and pro-abortion organizations throughout her trip – in Palermo with the Maghweb association, in Ancona with the feminist movement Non Una di Meno, in Bologna with the activists of Mujeres Libres, in Turin with Tullia Todros M.D., and lastly with the former head physician of the Gynecology and Obstetrics Department of the Sant’Anna hospital in Turin.
In the campaign, Doctors of the World asserts that Italy should follow the guidelines issued by the government in 2020 that, the group insists, were designed specifically to make pharmacological abortion more accessible.
The updated guideline also permits the abortion-inducing drug RU486 to be used until the ninth week of pregnancy without requiring hospitalization. Doctors of the World insists that, if the Italian government were in full cooperation with its own rules, women would be able to bypass the conscientious objectors. All Italian women would then have the equal “opportunity” to abort their babies. Of course, the abortion lobby insists that, in doing so, Italy would be less “distant” from the WHO directives.
A June 2023 Pew Research survey reported that the support for legal abortion among adults was widespread in European countries – including 79% of Italians. For now, Italian health professionals are protected by conscientious objection, but pro-abortion radicals are relentless in their attempt to eliminate this right.
In the meantime, in their zeal to “aid” women, they will heavily promote a different form of abortion so that all can access it, even “doing it themselves” at home.
What they fail to realize is that the abortion-inducing drug RU486 is deadly, not just to the unborn but also to the mother. We must always remember: Every abortion has two victims: One dead, one injured. Moreover, in the worst of cases, there are no survivors. Women do need aid, especially in the pregnancy process, but the kind of “aid” promoted by “Doctors of the World” will only hurt women, not help them.
