Ethical and legal aspects of the abortion dispute in Italy in 2020-2023

Abstract

The main goal of the article is to analyze the key elements of the current dispute over worldviews and politics in Italy concerning the ethical and legal aspects of various forms of abortion. The country on the Tiber River was one of the states around the world that widely liberalized abortion laws during the COVID-19 pandemic. In August 2020, the Italian Ministry of Health decided that pharmacological abortion – performed with the medical preparation RU-486 – should not be practiced at hospital gynaecology-obstetrics wards, but at day hospital facilities, with no requirement of hospitalization for women performing this type of abortion. Limited access to medical services in public and private healthcare facilities led to the practice of pharmacological abortion shifting largely from hospitals and clinics to pharmacies, private apartments, and homes. In 2021, pharmacological abortion in Italy accounted for 48.3% of all abortions performed under the current abortion law.

In the face of the trivialization of the termination of pregnancy, Italian pro-life circles have taken a variety of measures to protect preborn life. One such initiative was the “Beating Heart” campaign, which looked at the possibility of showing the unborn child and its beating heart to the woman seeking an abortion. The analyses carried out in the article show that in the age of the Internet and the global village, it is not so much the legal norms that are increasingly important, but human free will and the awakening of people’s moral sensitivity by developing appropriate bioethical awareness at the societal level. In this context, the various initiatives currently implemented in Italy by pro-life circles to achieve these goals are of great significance. In addition, the abortion debate in Italy supplies a number of arguments for the need to extend the conscience clause to pharmacy personnel.