Why is it so difficult to have data on access to abortion in Italy?

Law 194 which guarantees access to voluntary termination of pregnancy in Italy has existed since 1978, 46 years. Despite this, even today, in our country women have to pass test after test to have an abortion, often crossing entire regions. Furthermore in Italy, to date, it is impossible to obtain open and updated data on the application of the law. And this is a problem. Why? Because making access to voluntary termination of pregnancy an obstacle course, as many women say every day, means violating the law and also a fundamental right. As the Luca Coscioni association underlines in the survey «Never data 2»conducted by Chiara Lalli and Sonia Montegiove, finding data by structure is important because it allows women who want to have an abortion to have a clear map within which to choose where to go. Which hospital to contact.

«Our request is always the same: publish updated data for each individual structure»explain Lalli and Montegiove. «To know how 194 is applied and to really be able to choose to go to one hospital or another, we must have updated information that is not 3 years old and which concerns the structures and not the local health authorities or the regions. What purpose do we need to know what is happening in Umbria or Lazio? To nothing. We need to know what happens in the specific structure. And it is not enough to know the percentage of conscientious objectors, because the evaluation must consider many other variables (the accessibility of information, waiting times, the number of requests, mobility, the guarantee of the drug and the outpatient regime, as per provisions of the Ministry of Health itself, the IVG after the first 90 days). Finally, it would be desirable to no longer receive responses that link to sites where the data is not published as it should.”

In particular, the latest available report on the implementation of law 194 was published by the Ministry of Health in October 2023, with data from 2021, therefore from three years ago. But the law establishes that it must be delivered every year by the month of February. The data we have today are those present in the «Never Data 2» report, obtained by contacting the individual regions directly but in any case without obtaining responses from all the structures. As in the case of Sicily, Abruzzo and Calabria which did not send anything. There are still regions where there is only one hospital where law 194 applies, such as in Molise and Valle d’Aosta. Cities like Jesi and Assisi where conscientious objectors are 100% and in general the data found shows objection rates above 80% still in many Italian regions. All this prevents women from being truly free to choose and in some cases even from being able to have a safe abortion. As Filomena Gallo, national secretary of the Coscioni association, explained, “this delay and the lack of data for each individual structure are a real institutional violence that hinders the exercise of a fundamental right of women”. The right to health.