50 years of the pill in Italy, but sex education in schools is still lacking

As often happens even today it was a ruling of the Constitutional Court that made a step forward in rights. In this case the rights of women. On March 10, 1971, article 553 of the penal code was repealed, which prohibited “the propaganda of means to prevent procreation” and provided for a one-year prison sentence for anyone who propagated or used it. Since then, contraception gained freedom and the pill and other birth control methods arrived.

This provision was part of Title X of the Rocco Code, Crimes against the integrity and health of the lineage, which would have been completely canceled in 1978, with the approval of Law 194 on abortion.

Public consultants had already been established by law in 1975 and, in the same year Reform of family law brought parental authority from the fatherland, equating the duties and dignity of father and mother.

Contraception is a right that has led women to be able to make free and autonomous choices about their sexuality and motherhood. Even if the pill it could not be sold in pharmacies due to a law of the 1920s, repealed only in 1976 and was defined as regulator of the menstrual cycle to be marketed. To tell the population about it, AIED, the Italian Association for Demographic Education, made a photo novel with Paola Pitagora.

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Posted by AIED on Saturday, March 6, 2021

It is not a right still today, fifty years later, of all. Out of 45 countries in Europe Italy in Contraception Atlas 2019, Italy is 26th with “ample room for improvement for the right to sexual and reproductive health”. It is closer to Turkey and Ukraine than to the UK, France and Spain. About 60% of the Italian population between 18 and 54 uses contraceptive systems: condoms and pills are the most common. According to Istat data, however, one in four people choose interrupted coitus, rather than medical-scientific contraceptive systems.

Thanks to AIED, the pill has been legal for 50 years and Italy a more civilized country. ✊ On March 10, 1971, through an action …

Posted by AIED on Tuesday, March 9, 2021

“At the dawn of the third millennium, in Italy there is a goal on which to aggregate the commitment of all”, explains the AIED president, Mario Puiatti, “And it is the introduction of sexual and emotional education as a subject for teaching at school desks”. Sex education has been a school subject since 1955 in Sweden, since 1970 in Austria, since 1995 in Germany, since 2001 in France, since 2017 in the United Kingdom. In Italy it is not in the school curricula and most of the information comes from the web. “We are completely in breach of the European standards that follow WHO guidelines on the subject of” formal “methods for the sexual, affective and emotional education of young people in schools”.

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