By: Elisabetta

Elisabetta
Sun, 09 Oct 2022 22:22:39 +0000

This is a very good article but I feel the need to correct Tom’s assertion that Meloni is anti abortion:

Three days after the victory of the leader of the Brothers of Italy Giorgia Meloni, thousands of women demonstrated across Italy for the International Safe Abortion Day on the 28th of September. The national mobilisation was organised by the Italian feminist movement “No woman left behind” which every year since 2016 takes the streets asking that the voluntary termination of pregnancy be really guaranteed against the obstacles created by doctors who refuse to provide abortion services based on their personal beliefs.

To the slogan “Meloni do not sing victory, we will kick you out of history” the demonstrators marched through the streets of Verona, Milan, Turin, Bologna, Rome, Naples, Palermo and many others cities. They protested Meloni’s intention to take away the right to abortion and the God-fatherland-family model that Meloni implies in her political program.

True, in her political program to win the elections Meloni put the family at the top of her 25 priorities. She writes that the family is what makes a nation truly sovereign and spiritually strong and for this reason she wants to give young couples the opportunity to build their own family and have children. How? By increasing the amounts for the single and universal allowance for every child the new family has, by reducing VAT on early childhood products such as diapers, baby bottles, infant formula and others and by supporting Municipalities to ensure free nurseries open until the closing time of shops and offices, with a rotating opening system in the summer period. She is going to increase full-time places in primary school and she is going to promote company crèches, condominium and family crèches on the German model of the Tagesmutter. She will give incentives to companies that hire new mothers and that facilitate working from home. She is going also to create spaces dedicated to newborns with changing tables and breastfeeding areas in all buildings accessible to the public.

That Giorgia Meloni is encouraging women to have babies is clear but does this mean that she is against abortion?

Meloni has often spoken about abortion and about Law 194, the law that makes abortion possible in Italy, above all to defend herself from those who have reported how the victory of her party could lead to a limitation of women’s right to self-determination. A week before the elections she returned to speak on popular sovereignty and abortion on Rai 3 (the television channel owned and operated by state-owned public broadcaster RAI – Radiotelevisione italiana). The issue of voluntary termination of pregnancy was among the first to be addressed and in this regard, Meloni complained about ‘unfounded information’ circulating about her position and stated: “I never said that I want to change Law 194, but I said that I want to apply it fully: I would like to add rights, I would like that women who want to terminate their pregnancy because they have no alternatives, perhaps for economic reasons, perhaps because they thought they would be left alone, may have that alternative” Meloni also talked about the doctors who refuse to provide abortion services based on their personal beliefs. She stated that the right to abortion in Italy has always been guaranteed but that there is also the conscience of the people and that too is freedom. She added that as far as she knows, there is not a woman that could not terminate her pregnancy in Italy and as we defend the freedom of people to make their choices, we must also defend the conscience of people who refuse to provide abortion.

What then Meloni wrote about abortion in her first priority of her program, is what she has been saying all along: “Communication and information campaigns of a medical nature on the topic of fertility. Full application of Law 194 of 1978 on voluntary termination of pregnancy, starting with prevention. Establishment of a fund to help women who are alone and in financial difficulty to carry their pregnancy to term.”

If pregnant, Italian women now can choose what they think is best for them, they can decide to terminate their pregnancy or to keep their baby. To me this is good news.