A new government report shows that abortion rates in Italy continue to decline at the same time as a record number of gynaecologists refuse to perform abortions.
80-90 per cent of Italian gynaecologists refuse to abort babies, with a current peak of 90 per cent in Campania and over 80 per cent throughout all of Southern Italy.
Continuing trend
Alongside these figures, the report by the Ministry of Health found that the abortion rates in 2012 dropped by 4.9 per cent compared to the previous year.
Last year 106,000 abortions were carried out compared to 111,000 in the previous year. This continues a trend of abortion rates steadily dropping since 1982, when they peaked at 235,000.
Reports indicate this increasing reduction in abortions is partly the result of a law which permits health care workers to refuse to perform abortions on conscience grounds.
Conscience law
In 2010, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe introduced a resolution that said: “no person shall be compelled to practice the removal of a child or an embryo, and no one may be discriminated against in any way as a result of his refusal.”
But a request has also been made by an Italian national labour union that only doctors willing to carry out abortions should be eligible for employment in the public health system.
The Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL), together with International Planned Parenthood Federation European Network, twice lodged complaints to the European Committee on Social Rights of the Council of Europe against the wide use of the Italian abortion conscience provision.
Democratic deficit
However Giacomo Rocchi, a Judge of the Supreme Court who was in Strasbourg in June in response to the complaint application, said that proposals to employ doctors in the public health system based on their views about abortion would amount to an outright case of discrimination.
Mr Rocchi, who is also a member of Lawyers for Life, said: “…objectors would be discriminated against for exercising a constitutional right, recognised by the European Convention on Human Rights.
“In addition, if the doctor, once hired, decided to stop practicing abortions, he would be fired and then he would be denied the opportunity to follow his conscience and his faith.
“A state that allows the killing of innocent children already has a democratic deficit,” Rocchi continued.
“And it would be even more serious if the Committee were to decide for CGIL: forcing doctors to practice abortion by law would be a measure of a totalitarian state.
“Luckily, any decision of the Committee in this direction would have an effect only of exhortation and would not be binding on our country.”
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