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and a member of the International Communist Group [Italian section of the Fourth International], explains in the article below the renewed struggle for women's right to abortion. In it, she takes up the reactionary positions of the Italian Communist Party and the role of Two elements have contributed to relaunching the struggle for free abortion on demand in Italy - the explosion at the ICMESA (La Roche) chemical factory in Seveso, near Milan, during August, which spread the defoliant dioxine (tetrafenolo - used in Vietnam) over the surrounding countryside; and secondly, the parliamentary debate on a new abortion law has been taken up again at the level of the Select Commitee.
The terrible pollution caused by the multinational La Roche led to the evacuation of the entire population of the towns of Seveso and Desio, but not before over two weeks had passed through the criminal incompetence and blameshifting of the local and national authorities, and notwithstanding such obvious signs as wilting vegetation and the death of all small animals in the zone. One of the reasons for this delay may well lie in the connection the ICMESA factory has with the production of secret chemical warfare arms for NATO Whilst debating whether to burn the entire zone, or bury it under a metre of cement, or wash it down with olive oil and water, the authorities took a census of the number of pregnant women living in Seveso and Desio, and hastily revived a law passed 18 months ago by the Corte Costituzionale (equivalent to the British High Court), and which had been applied only very sporadically. This law concerned theraputic aborNO!
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LIBERO tion. When it was found that around 400 women were pregnant, the Mangiagalli Gynaecological Clinic in Milan was made available for theraputic abortions in the first three months of pregnancy. Of course that part of the bourgeoisie most in difficulties from the population realising the disastrous effects of dioxine on foetuses and small children, suddenly discovered that abortion was preferable horrors provoked by uncontrolled industrial development in which the only criteria is maximum profit. The Vatican promptly objected to such moral laxitude and threw its forces into a shameful campaign to deny the effects of dioxine (in this they soon reached agreement with the industrialists!) and to deny that deformed babies might be the result - or if they did, that many Christian couples would be happy to adopt one!
There was a subsequent line-up of the medical profession on one side or another, and the consequence of this stalemate is that to date, only 25 women have obtained legal abortions at the Milan clinic, and most of the pregnant women in these two towns have resorted to the usual backstreet solution.
The main worry of the Vatican can be summed up as 'theraputic abortion is the thin end of the wedge and will lead to conceding free abortion on demand' - and.
to a certain extent this has proved true, as many women from all over Lombardy wanting abortions promptly knocked on the door of the Mangiagalli Clinic, where the only help they found came from the women's groups who have picketed the clinic.
The facts of Seveso have clearly demonstrated the limitations of theraputic abortion; in order to fulfil the requirement that abortion be conceded only in the case of grave danger to the mental or physical health of the woman, those few women who have passCONT AD women's movement. These proposals were taken up and presented in Parliament by two of the members of Democrazia Proletaria. They have aroused ferocious attacks, and have also been the source of an ongoing debate within the women's movement. The main points of the proposals are; free abortion on demand within
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MARY FERRALI, an activist in the Italian Abortion Campaign the far left members of Parliament elected in the June elections.
ISTITKO SI! A BORTO