The very small and very reserved Republic of San Marino, nestled between Emilia Romagna and Marche, has been until today, together with Andorra and Malta, a garrison for the protection of nascent human life through the criminal prohibition of abortion. All other European countries have, over the decades, introduced regulations favorable to the voluntary termination of pregnancy. Of course, with some differences between discipline and discipline (for example the role of the doctor, self-determination of the woman, terms and indications, systems to avoid abortion), but with the common characteristic of making the suppression of human beings legitimate and therefore “just” on the way to birth, with the endorsement of medicine and social consensus.
A new vision of family and sexual relationships, a new way of thinking about the female condition, the changes in the productive system and the spread of a materialistic culture in the various versions of utilitarianism, hedonism and libertarianism have led to the legalization of abortion , that is, the killing of the conceived before his birth.
Our century has seen a vast reform of the laws on abortion, inspired by a greater or lesser permissiveness and even creating wide spaces in which the interruption of pregnancy becomes not only extraneous to criminal law, but the content of a real subjective right of women, indeed of a privileged right, particularly guaranteed and assisted by the State.
Legislative innovations run through the entire world of European culture since 1920, the date of the liberalization of abortion in the Soviet Union. The Communist ideological and political system affirmed itself after the Second World War in all of Eastern Europe, even in those countries, in a short time, reforms were promulgated that widely legalized the interruption of pregnancy: the Polish and Hungarian laws of 1956 and Bulgarian, the Czechoslovak law of 1957.
The abortionist tsunami
Often recourses to constitutional courts and popular referendums are inserted in these dynamics and there are those who see the profound lines of that cultural confrontation that opposes materialism to personalism. It is probably no coincidence that the value of life at its inception began to cloud over in the countries of real socialism, where the ideology of theoretical materialism was immediately imposed, and only later in the West, suffering from the slower but deadly disease of practical materialism. In both cases, personalism, with the acute perception of the mystery present in every human being, is suffering.
Even where more distant in time is the introduction into the legal systems of the various countries of the voluntary interruption of pregnancy, there are frequent signs of rethinking at both a cultural and legislative level, a sign of a discomfort that cannot subside.
Legal radicalism and abortion tourism
In 2014, the Union of San Marino Women (UDS) presented a permissive bill, which fell only for the end of the legislature.
Between 2015 and 2016, five Arengo applications were then presented to the Great and General Council with the aim of introducing voluntary abortion. The European Federation «One of us» sent a note to the Captains Regent and to all the Councilors of the Great and General Council of the Republic of San Marino asking, with ample motivation, the rejection of all the requests. “On the cultural level”, it was written in the note sent, “the Republic of San Marino, in accordance with its origins and its history, has a task of great importance: the unlimited and unreserved recognition of human dignity makes the Republic great of San Marino despite its geographic and demographic smallness. San Marino can be a light of civilization that does not go out and that also radiates outside its territory. Recognizing the value of human life even when it is small, fragile and defenseless, such as that of unborn children, consolidates the whole culture of human rights “.
Three of the five instances passed, but an agenda also passed demanding that human life and motherhood be protected from conception.
The debate then seemed to slumber to rekindle more recently, when, in 2019 and 2021, two very permissive bills were presented, those currently pending in parliament: the first promoted by the UDS, the second – already examined by the parliament at first reading – by the Movimento Civico Rete, the party that holds the majority in the government.
The beauty of life versus death
that the protection of human life is fidelity to the value that founds an authentic civil coexistence;
that maintaining firmness on the defense of human life is a source of pride and hope for Europe;
that if respect for human life is lost in the womb, human dignity is forever endangered; that if in San Marino the health care for the mother and the child before and after childbirth is very good, if the work policies facilitate the woman, if the assistance to the woman and the child is almost completely free, if the family allowances they are guaranteed, it is because the support for life is real and also concerns the conceived;
that there are many positive testimonies of acceptance of life despite the difficulties; that abortion inflicts a deep wound on women;
that introducing abortion would end up feeding the throwaway culture by trampling on the principle of equality, threatening the authentic culture of human rights head on and weakening the reasons for welcoming a new life also by society.