San Marino. “No more girls left to themselves”
“When I decided to engage with UDS in the battle for the decriminalization of abortion in San Marino, I immediately felt that the anti-abortion groups could find us hard together. First part of the question, in which it is foreseen the possibility of terminating the pregnancy within the twelfth week “.
Thus began a reflection by Valentina Rossi, member of the Promoting Committee of the Referendum for the decriminalization of the IVG in San Marino, which makes an appeal in view of next September 26th. “Well before the election campaign started, however, we found ourselves faced with a series of attacks against what is called” therapeutic abortion “, a very delicate issue that would require the utmost attention and should be defined on tiptoe.
I have no children and I have never been pregnant, but since I was a girl the question of therapeutic abortion has always touched me and pushed me to profound reflections. I grew up in the world of disability because my older brother was born with a very serious handicap due to “lack of assistance at the time of birth”. He would still have been a child, a boy and then a man if an infinite series of pathologies favored by his disability, did not make me happy with his existence: there were years, years, during which he never stopped screaming desperately, except for exhaustion. for the pain 24 hours a day. Without being able to make himself understood, without all our love being enough to help him.
Even if in the case of my brother it was an “accident” impossible to predict, as a woman who wanted to become a mother I have always looked with great hope at the progress of science that today allows so many very important diagnoses.
I took it for granted that for everyone, if you pause for a moment to think, the idea of a woman, her partner and their family members facing a bad diagnosis is the worst one can imagine.
I have never hesitated to recognize it and feel close to those who, despite a diagnosis, decide to continue the pregnancy and accept what fate has in store for them. For whatever reason a woman makes the choice to have a sick child, I understand. And a country must put into operation possible and imaginable tools for all to support a civilized country, materially before and after childbirth.
Much has been done in recent decades to improve a company that certainly was not included, and we all know how much there is still to be done. In the reborn UDS, one of the first working groups we had deals with, for example, the sexuality of people with disabilities, precisely because we firmly believe in the importance of life and a life that is as complete, fulfilling and happy as possible for everyone.
However, we equally firmly believe that a woman who finally finds herself making a different choice, because each case is unique and because the possible pathologies are endless, should also be helped, understood, supported. Certainly not abandoned, blamed, criminalized, as is the case today in our country.
Too often our society is led to judge a woman for her alleged selfishness, when she does not want to carry a pregnancy to term, convinced that it is because she does not want to take care of a child, especially if she is particularly in need. A woman who faces an abortion, on the other hand, whether it is in the first three months or even more in the case of a bad diagnosis, takes upon herself a painful choice, in order not to create more pain.
All over the world, science works hard to refine more and more prenatal diagnoses: do we really believe that they are all Nazis devoted to eugenics? Or maybe you just want to fight for a better life?
If we take the thematic map of the world with the representation of individual states according to their level of democracy and superimpose it on the one dedicated to the legalization of abortion, we see that almost everywhere, where there is democracy, the voluntary termination of pregnancy is legal and safe: where there is authoritarianism or dictatorship, abortion is prosecuted.
We are the “anomaly”.
No more girls left to fend for themselves, no more precarious women forced to go to work the day after an abortion because they have to hide here, no more families hit by unfortunate diagnoses that have been expelled and criminalized.
On September 26 we vote YES “.
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