In San Marino a law will allow abortion
On 26 September, the women and men of San Marino decided, in a referendum, that abortion can be done, that it is no longer illegal. Said this way, it is certainly good news, it is a pity that, pausing for a moment to reflect, the first thing to say is: «What? So it was still illegal before? ‘ Exactly. To obtain the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy, the women of San Marino had to wait until 2021 and they got there thanks to a referendum that shouted the will of the people with a very large majority (77.30%). In numbers, we are talking about 11,119 votes in favor and 3,265 against out of 14,384 voters. The answer to which the citizens replied is this: “Do you want the woman to freely apply for pregnancy within the 12th week of gestation, and also subsequently if there is a danger to the woman’s life or if there are anomalies and malformations of the fetus that pose a serious risk to the physical or psychological health of the woman? “
It was not the first time that in what is considered the oldest republic in the world, civil society, women in the first place, have the right to grant all women the right to abortion. It had already happened in 2003, therefore 18 years ago, with the councilor Vanessa Muratori, then in 2014, in 2017 and in 2019. All attempts were unsuccessful, so much so that in San Marino, up to now, abortion was punished with two articles of the penal code: 153 which provides for “imprisonment from six months to three years” for both the woman who has an abortion and for the doctor who practices the termination of pregnancy; Article 154 provides for shorter sentences in the case of abortion by unmarried women. However, abortion was also illegal in cases of rape and severe malformations of the fetus and life threatening for the woman.
Now, thanks to the result of the popular initiative referendum, the State Congress will be called upon to draft a law within six months aimed at regulating the voluntary termination of pregnancy in the San Marino territory. It happens 43 years after the Italian law 194 approved on May 22, 1978 for the decriminalization of abortion.
If you go back in time a little, it turns out that San Marino has been late on many fundamental rights. Always disfavoring women. The right to active voting was only won in 1958 while the possibility of being elected came even later, in 1973. The first time that San Marino women were able to vote was with the political elections of 13 September 1964, 18 years later. their Italian neighbors.
It’s not all. Another very long battle was carried out by the activists of the Union of San Marino Women (Uds), together with President Karen Pruccoli, also promoters of the referendum on abortion, the one for citizenship. “Women were second-class citizens until the early 2000s, so they cannot pass on citizenship to their children and they lost it if they married a foreign citizen,” explains Karen Pruccoli in a few hours triumph. “That too was a very long struggle that took away the focus on voluntary termination of pregnancy for a while”.
The evident result of the referendum today tells of a changing San Marino, ready to open up to the world. “This vote means that for the citizens of San Marino we are in a secular state, despite strong pressure from the Church. Personal beliefs cannot interface, when it comes to rights women can choose ”. Until now, those wishing to become pregnant were forced to go elsewhere, perhaps alone, in another country, with this future high economic costs. Without considering the possibility of every woman who is faced with such a complex situation. “The young people of San Marino are generations of boys and girls who go beyond borders, travel the world, study abroad”, continues Karen Pruccoli, who in 2017 had already been president of the Commission for equal opportunities in San Marino. “There was certainly a push on their part, well aware of civil rights, open, and which in any case influenced, in our opinion, also parents and previous generations. I also believe that in recent years there has been a group awareness on the part of women and this has been fundamental ». San Marino had in fact remained among the European countries to prohibit the voluntary termination of pregnancy, as continues to happen in Malta, the Vatican City, Andorra, Cyprus (except for rape and the danger of life for the woman), Liechtenstein and Poland (abortion has been almost completely banned here since last October).
“San Marino is a small country, independent from Italy and like all countries surrounded by a larger state, there is a tendency towards closure,” explains Pruccoli. «As if to want to protect himself. It has always been a very suspicious place, closed to the world. I believe it is a cultural fact typical of small realities inserted in larger contests ». Now, with this result that far exceeds expectations, the goal is to start a new course, partly started with the decriminalization of homosexuality in 2004 (yes, up until that moment being gay was illegal. 274 of the Criminal Code, according to which homosexual relationships could be punished with imprisonment from 3 to 12 months). In 2018, two years after Italy, civil unions were regulated by law and immediately after, with a referendum, the prohibition of sexual discrimination was inserted directly into the Constitution. “A moment we are proud of,” recalls Karen Pruccoli. «Here civil unions are possible not only for homosexual couples but also for heterosexual ones. That moment personally gave me a huge boost and there I began to believe, as a woman born and raised in San Marino, that she could really change our country. And today we are succeeding ».
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