Abortion, the Right’s blitz. The protest is growing. FdI’s replies
Protest is growing over the amendment to the legislative decree on the Pnrr which provides for the involvement in counseling centers of those third sector entities that support maternity: for the opposition it is an attack on the right to abortionor. While in the Chamber of Deputies the centre-right approves the vote of confidence on the measure, outside Montecitorio there are also several demonstrators from the consultancy network and from Non una di meno. A sit-in, hastily organized after the green light was given to the proposal to amend the basic text passed by the Budget Committee, in which a delegation of the opposition parties, the FP CGIL and other citizens participated.
“Was a blitz of the majority“, claims the dem group leader Chiara Braga, “We will oppose it in every way.” “Instrumental” controversies, replies the president of the FdI deputies Tommaso Foti. The fact is that, at least in the Chamber, with the green light of confidence the measure is armored. Hence, the Democratic Party’s call for a “mobilization of the Regions and territorial entities to prevent this law from putting the right to abortion at risk”. Meanwhile, the Pro Vita & Famiglia association pulls out.
“We have no intention of entering the consultants – says the spokesperson Jacopo Coghe -. This does not take away the urgency of returning clinics to the role for which they were designed by law 194, that is, places where women can be helped to find concrete alternatives to abortion”. A clarification that does not reassure the activists of the centers and clinics at all : “It’s not just the Pro Vita & family movement. The anti-choice movements are a widespread and complex galaxy. And they have an economic strength” such that they can enter the clinics even “without new or greater burdens on public finances”, explains Barbara Piccininni, one of the organizers of the demonstration in front of the Chamber. “This proposal is unbearable, inadmissible and outside the scope of the history”, also states Antonella Veltri, president of DiRe – Women on the Net against violence. Numerous exponents of the Democratic Party, Avs, M5s join the chorus with clear words.
“The amendment on consultants? It’s a proposal, we will evaluate it – replies deputy prime minister Antonio Tajani -. There is a law in Italy that certainly cannot be changed” and “there is no intention” to do so. In the blue party, where Tajani himself recalls there has always been “freedom of conscience” on these issues, there are many who are not enthusiastic about the consultancy operation, but the line is not to make any discord. FdI, which presented the amendment, however, defends the initiative vigorously. The deputy in the Chamber Manlio Messina in the Chamber he clarifies that “the 194 cannot be touched”, the objective is to give women “the possibility to choose between death and life. I understand that it bothers the left, in their sinister policies of death“, the lunge.
“But what an attack on 194, the only real thing is the left’s squint on the issue.” Paola Ambrogio, senator of the Brothers of Italy, stated this regarding the opposition’s protests regarding the debate opened by the amendment to the Pnrr decree, approved by the Budget Committee of the Chamber. The Regions, the text states, in the clinics can “make use, without new or greater burdens on public finances, of the involvement of Third Sector subjects who have qualified experience in maternity support”.
“It is unacceptable that we continue to exploit any intervention on the matter, we are exclusively defending the integrity of a law which, in its final application, must allow women full freedom of choice. Offering and guaranteeing women the right support, before and after , within a shared, conscious and never imposed path, we certainly do not limit the perimeter of individual freedom but, on the contrary, we expand it. Those who say otherwise do not fight in defense of 194, nor for its complete application, but favor it is, in fact, a distorted and partial vision.” “Finding and promoting concrete alternatives to abortion – continues Roberto Ravello, regional director of Fratelli d’Italia – I believe it is a dynamic that can be entirely traced back to self-determination, one of the highest values of a society like ours. It is not an ideological race , the 194 belongs to no one in particular: those who have proclaimed themselves champions of the 194 ignore that freedom has no political color. A free choice can never be a problem”.
“A twist, the Democratic Party wants to abolish law 194”. This is what the vice president of the Chamber of Deputies declares Fabio Rampelli of Brothers of Italy. “After years of all-out defense, accompanied by the accusation of the right-wingers wanting to abolish it, Elly Schlein now realizes its content and contests it, taking it out on Fdi instead of Pci-Psi-Psdi-Pri-Pli who approved it in 1978 “. The Fdi exponent cites some points contained in the law: “‘The State, the Region and the Local Authorities… promote and develop socio-health services, as well as other initiatives necessary to prevent abortion from being used for the purposes of limiting of births’. Does the Democratic Party agree? Article 2 states: ‘Family counseling centers (…) assist pregnant women (…) helping to overcome the causes that could lead women to ‘termination of pregnancy. On the basis of specific regulations or agreements, the consultants can avail themselves, for the purposes established by law, of the voluntary collaboration of suitable basic social formations and voluntary associations, which can also help difficult motherhood after birth’ Does the Democratic Party agree?”, asks the parliamentarian again. “As long as 194 exists, the right to abortion will not be touched by the centre-right, but the centre-right has the right/duty to apply it in its entirety”, concludes Rampelli.