Antonella Baccaro (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
Dto Sicily up to the top of Mont Blanc, looking for the abortion pill RU486. The Medici nel mondo campaign uses the tool of irony The Impossible Pill (The impossible pill, ed), which accompanies the new report “Pharmacological abortion in Italy”: a collection of data, interviews and testimonies from healthcare workers, activists and patients.
A chiaroscuro photograph of our country which, 45 years after the entry into force of law 194, it is still struggling to implement it due to the strong fragmentation in the supply of medical facilities and personnel. According to the data of MMinistry of Health (2020), family clinics that carry out consultations for IVG (voluntary termination of pregnancy) and issue certificates are 69.9 percent of the totaland, while the structures with obstetrics and gynecology departments that carry it out are 63.8 percent.
Furthermore, 36.2 percent of non-medical staff, 44.6 percent of anesthetists and 64.6 percent of gynecologists are conscientious objectors, with peaks of 84.5 percent in the province of Bolzano, 83.8 percent in Abruzzo and 82.8 percent in Molise. Not only that: as noted by theLuca Coscioni Associationin 22 hospitals (and four clinics) the percentage of conscientious objectors among healthcare personnel is 100 percent.
The discrepancies become even more evident with respect to medical abortion, which arrived in Italy only in 2009, used by 0.7 percent of patients in 2010 and by 20.8 percent in 2018, up to 31.9 percent in 2020, with the highest percentages in Liguria (54.8 percent), Basilicata (52.5 percent) and Piedmont (51.6 percent). Figures very far from those of the rest of Europe.
In our country the unavailability of the pill is accompanied by other problemssuch as the times that are too long to obtain it in day hospital, which are ill-suited to the nine (in some regions still seven) weeks allowed by law for its use.
The campaign “The Impossible Pill”, with the ironic language of Laura Formenti, who crossed Italy from Sicily to the top of Mont Blanc, denounces the difficulties in accessing medical abortion, a human right that is still too often ignored
Eventually the journey in search of the pill arrives at the top of Mont Blanc. And there it is, kept inside a display case set in the glacier. To those who think that it can’t get any worse than this, we tell you to be on your guard: the path to rights is dotted with sensational backtracks.
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