Europe calls them unequal access to termination of pregnancy at local and regional level. Means that in Italy abortion is increasingly difficult and in some areas it is more difficult than elsewhere. The European Social Charter Committee, an organ of the Council of Europe, adds that the data provided by the government does not prove that the medical staff specialized in providing the service is sufficient.
Italy had to answer for the measures taken to resolve the violations detected in 2013 and 2015.
The latest data available, relating to 2018 and presented in Parliament in January 2020, although there should be annual surveys, they were not enough to demonstrate that these violations were no longer in place.
The motivation is simple. The law on voluntary termination of pregnancy is not yet fully applied in Italy. First of all for the lack of doctors. Among the clarifications of Europe there is precisely the lack of demonstration of the inequality of treatment between doctors who object and those who are not.
The number of conscientious objecting gynecologists is constantly increasing and 5% of abortions are performed in a region other than that of the woman’s residence. The last case is that of Matera where, since the end of last year, the only non-objection doctor of the local health authority’s clinic is no longer available. According to the complaint of Collettivo Donne Matera, women are asked to move to Potenza also for pharmacological abortion, with the RU-486 pill.
“The government has not provided any information on the number or percentage of abortion applications that could not be met in a particular hospital or region due to the insufficient number of non-objecting doctors,” explains the committee, which is now asking for data on clandestine abortions and on the number of conscientious objectors among pharmacists and family planning center staff.
For years, the associations that support law 194 have been saying that these are the numbers to be compared to understand the true situation of abortion in Italy. Above all, they reiterate that Italy must adapt and use adequate tools such as drug abortion, opposed instead in some regions (Umbria, Marche and Abruzzo) with the imposition of a hospitalization not required by the rules of the Ministry of Health or the prohibition of interrupting pregnancy in the clinics.
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