San Marino. Law supporting single mothers, satisfied with the One of Us Association
“Last week the Great and General Council unanimously approved a new law providing ‘forms of support’ to ‘single pregnant women’. The Uno di Noi Association, without wanting to go into the merits of whether more or better could have been done, wishes to express its applause for this legislative initiative which, far from the paternalism that some instrumentally wanted to read us, has finally represented an important first step for give substance to the much-vaunted principle of the ‘social value of motherhood’”.
declares it theOne of Us Associationemphasizing in a release focused on the support law for single mothers that “if motherhood, as recognized by all, also has a social value and is not just a private fact, or even a female anatomical issue, civil society, and for it the State, has the full right, as well as the duty, to identify and make available to women in difficulty any useful tool to ‘support them in the conscious choice of parenthood’, which still remains ‘a choice’”.
And again: “An authentically ‘pro-choice’ approach should read in this legislative intervention a measure to protect the effective freedom of choice of women alone or in difficulty, who, in the absence of support, could ‘fall back’, and not ‘choose ‘, on the voluntary interruption of pregnancy only because forced by economic, occupational or housing difficulties. An authentically ‘pro-choice’ approach, not stranded on 1968 ideologies, should also applaud the last provision of this law, which intervenes to decriminalize the choice of that woman who, not wanting to be a mother or be the executioner of that child , refusing, in complete freedom, even the concrete aids offered by this law, decides to give birth anonymously and to entrust his own child to the care of hospital staff from birth, thus allowing for immediate adoption. In short, a third option granted to women, the one that, in the referendum campaign, we defined as the way of the ‘gift’, capable of combining, where necessary, the freedom of choice of women with the right to life, of the unborn child, and with the social value of the birth rate”.
“What is paternalistic or statist about all this? How can all this be read as a threat to women’s freedom of choice and not instead a guarantee of its effectiveness? Because when it is addressed to the woman who has decided to have an abortion, then the aid of the State (free medical, pharmacological and surgical assistance, both in the territory and outside) is right, indeed a duty, while when it is addressed to the woman who, albeit objectively difficulty, has decided on motherhood, then it would not be real help but only conservative paternalism? Why all this fear of discovering that, with a little concrete closeness to these women, many of them then choose not to have an abortion? If even one child were born next year in San Marino thanks to these new aids, or thanks to the provision of anonymous birth, escaping the voluntary interruption of pregnancy, despite now, thanks to 127, it has become an ordinary loanable benefit, Wouldn’t that be a reason for joy for everyone and satisfaction for the San Marino community? Where is the problem? Instead, it would be preferable for him to be immolated on the altar of an ideological feminism to the point of preferring that women not be helped by the state, through the professional structures responsible for this, but rather be left alone, in their ‘freedom’ to choose, only, the solution that appears to you the most expeditious?”, asks the Uno di Noi Association, which finally asserts: “It matters little if among the politicians who approved this law there were someone who believes they have thus ethically sheltered the his vote in favor of 127, what matters, and is a source of great satisfaction for us, is knowing that this law has been unanimously approved by the Great and General Council, as well as seeing that finally, thanks to this law, it has become a concrete step to protect the right to motherhood of all women, even those alone or in difficulty; we are sorry that the criticisms have come from those who should always be on the side of women”.