Women - or rather, so-called 'women's rights' - have been instrumentally thrown into the centre of this horrible election campaign, probably the worst ever.
Not the low female employment rate, the gender pay gap, the lack of services that forces us into the living welfare part, violence and feminicide, the machismo of politics and all that we know and experience. The issue of issues is abortion, fished out of the oblivion in which it is normally confined -no party ever deals in ordinary times with Law 194, its implementation, objection rates and so on- to become territory of contention between the male parties.
All these men who suddenly start discussing it without even knowing what they are talking about, replacing women, denying space to real experience, talking randomly about 'pills' -a classic: the confusion between morning-after contraception and the RU486 abortion pill-. And never for a self-conscious pooling of one's part and one's experiences as men on abortion, but to make it urn material on female flesh.
The "Marche case', region governed by the centre-right, becomes the subject of reportage in support of the left. Of the 'Emilia case', on the other hand, a region governed by the centre-left, and in exactly the same way, no one ever talks.
In Emilia, the situation is no different from that of the Marches and of most Italian regions: at the local health authority of Piacenza 77% of gynaecologists are objectors, at the local health authority of Ferrara 69%, in Parma 62.5%, and so on. The hospitals with the highest percentages of gynaecologists who are objectors are the Sant'Orsola hospital in Bologna, where 71.05 % is, and the Cento hospital with 66.7%. A few months ago, in February to be precise, the Green Europe Group tabled a question in the Emilia-Romagna legislative assembly to ask the regional government for clarification on the right to the termination of pregnancy in the region's healthcare facilities, considering that in many hospitals the percentage of gynaecologists and anaesthetists who are conscientious objectors ranges between 60% and 100% (see here).
As for the distribution of the RU486 pill which in the right-wing Marches is not carried out by consultants: In left-wing Emilia the situation is as follows: tell Chiara Ferragni. The consultants do not distribute it. So much so that on 23 May, just four months ago, some feminist organisations in Emilia-Romagna, including Mujeres Libres and Non Una di Meno, sent a pec to the health directorate to request the application of the provisions contained in the regional determination December 2021, considering that it is still not possible to have access to the abortion pill in the Emilia-Romagna consultancies (see here and put the issue to regional vice-president Elly Schlein, just as it is put to Giorgia Meloni).
What are we talking about, then? Certainly not 'women's rights', but the power of men, left and right, who unscrupulously use any means, including our flesh, to wrest consensus. We women must not take part in this vile contest, taking sides in the dogfight between one or the other.
p.s: then of the RU486, which relieves hospitals of their budgets and responsibilities, 3 days of waiting for an abortion alone at home when with the Karman you get by in a few minutes in the day hospital without noticing anything, well: we'll talk about all this another time.
Marina Terragni
