On 26 September, with a popular referendum, the citizens of the Republic of San Marino they will decide whether to render legal abortion within the borders of their state. The referendum question, launched byUnion of San Marino Women (Uds), is in fact the legalization of abortion within 12 weeks of pregnancy and even beyond this period in case of life threatening for the woman or for serious malformations of the fetus. To date a San Marino abortion is still a crime: women cannot resort to it under any circumstances. Not when they are in danger of life, but not even if they became pregnant after a rape or even if the conditions of the fetus are incompatible with life. Imagine in the case of claiming a choice of choice, which in the overwhelming freedom of Western countries was conquered in the last century. The San Marino citizens who want to have an abortion are in fact forced to go abroad: “Usually in hospitals of Emilia Romagna, where they spend a minimum of 1,500 euros to have an abortion, plus hotel expenses. We do not know how many these women are because, despite the many requests to politics and to our secretary of state, no one has ever asked the Emilia Romagna Local Health Authority for the numbers “, he explains to the madequotidiano.it the president of the Union of San Marino Women and of the committee for the referendum, Karen Pruccoli.

The San Marino Criminal Code “which has remained more or less unchanged since 1865” provides in article 153 and 154 “the imprisonment from three to six years for every woman who has an abortion and for every person who helps her and who procures the abortion ”. In 2021 a referendum to legalize a practice that has been in force in Italy since 1978 may seem too late, but, as Pruccoli explains, “we have been trying to obtain the legalization of the voluntary termination of pregnancy for 18 years since 2003. First they have package of left-wing political groups, failing. Over the past seven years, the UDS has tried with all the tools provided by ours direct democracy: countless Arengo Instances (requests of public interest ed), some even approved but never applied; two bills of popular initiative (in 2014 and 2019), illegally placed in a drawer. Until in 2020 we decided to move towards the referendum, in the total indifference of politics, which woke up only when we presented the 3 thousand signatures necessary to address it. Before 2000, the battle for the IVG was unthinkable. Since the 1970s, San Marino women have fought for other rights: citizenship and the transmission of citizenship to their children. A San Marino woman who was getting married to a non-San Marino woman in fact he lost his citizenship, unlike what happened to men in the same conditions “.

In fact, the history of the Republic of the Titan shows a chronic delay in terms of rights. There divorce law arrives in San Marino in 1986, 16 years later than in Italy. The one for active voting for women comes into force in 1964, for the passive one in the 1974: respectively 19 and 28 years late to Italy. In San Marino until 2004 homosexuality was considered a crime. “While civil unions have been celebrated in our state since 2018”, explains Pruccoli. “The real problem is that in the last twenty years, with one small exception lasting three years, the overwhelming majority of governments were conservative and anti-abortion. In San Marino we still have the Christian Democracy: ours is a Catholic, traditionalist and patriarchal country. A political terrain that, of course, has also resulted in a political under-representation of women, who are, after so many battles of the UDS, the 33% in Parliament. While only one in 10 women is Secretary of State, a figure comparable to the Italian minister ”.

Within Europe, besides San Marino, there are two micro nations in which abortion is still totally illegal: Andorra And Malta. Until a month ago, it was also on the list Gibraltar, which on June 24, following a popular referendum, made the IVG legal. “The women of Gibraltar won with 62%”, says Pruccoli, “We are in constant dialogue with them, with the women of Malta and Andorra. We stay close to Polish women, who have seen their right to voluntary termination of pregnancy reduced. For San Marino the times are not ripe, they are very ripe. We have received great feedback from the citizens: September 26 will be an appointment with the history of women’s rights: we hope to win it for all and for all “.