Vatican influence over Italy's health system is restricting abortions, doctors warn

[Humanist_Activist]

[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]Italian women are being deprived of the right to an abortion, as the Vatican's influence over the country's health system results in the hiring of doctors who refuse to undertake the procedure on moral grounds, a group of the country's pro-choice doctors has warned.

Nine out of 10 obstetricians and gynaecologists working in public hospitals in some districts are now publicly refusing to operate, despite the 1978 Law 194 stating that every woman be guaranteed access to an elective termination within the first 90 days of a pregnancy.

In one case this year, 28-year-old Valentina Magnanti was left to give birth to a severely-malformed child in a hospital toilet in Rome because none of the doctors would treat her. The woman's request for medically induced abortion had been granted. But after taking the drugs needed to induce the termination process, the hospital was unable to find willing medical and nursing staff to complete the procedure.

More at link:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/vatican-influence-over-italys-health-system-is-restricting-abortions-doctors-warn-9908461.html

This is precisely the type of bullshit that pisses me off the most, they should amend this law to not allow conscience exceptions, period, they are bullshit anyways, if you want to be an OB/GYN at a hospital, then you should be prepared to assist in all procedures related to that specialty, including abortion. And if you refuse, you should get fired, and if it were a situation like what occured with the woman mentioned above, you should be sanctioned, license pulled, and fined/jailed for negligence.

[yeoman6987]

1. They have a huge problem if they take your

Suggestion. 90 percent of the doctors would be fired. How would they make up the shortage of doctors?

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Preference in hiring should be given to doctors who will perform abortions

They are better able to perform the duties of a doctor. Hospitals should be directed to employ sufficient staff to be able to meet the demand for abortions. Failure to do so should result in administrators being fired for incompetence. If this means paying a higher salary to ensure that a doctor willing to perform abortions will move to that hospital, then that's what they'd have to do.

[yeoman6987]

4. Well in our World that would work

In reality it won't. Even in the US doctors don't have to perform abortions if they don't feel like it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. I'm not saying they should be forced to perform them; those that will should get preference

and all hospitals should have sufficient staff to perform scheduled abortions (I understand an emergency one might not be practical to arrange, but you can transfer to another hospital for an emergency). If that means paying them to move to cover the country, or employing Italian-speaking doctors from outside the country, then that is what should be done.

[Humanist_Activist]

6. I have a feeling that if these doctors had to choose between keeping their jobs or violating...

their conscience, as malformed as it is, many of them would choose to violate their conscience, if not, then they need to move onto private practice that openly advertises that they won't perform abortions, and the hospitals should be giving preference to those who will perform abortions and make it clear its a requirement for hiring.

[rug]

2. This is where the tension lies.

Pages 4 through 6 at the link:

Background of the Law 194

Article 4 of Law 194, adopted on 22 May 1978, guarantees the possibility to “accede to the voluntary interruption of a pregnancy for a woman that accuses circumstances for which the pregnancy, the delivery and the actual maternity would imply a serious danger for her physical and mental health, for her general state of health, or for her economic, social, and familiar conditions or to the circumstances in which the pregnancy has happened, and on the prevision of possible anomalies or malformations of the conceived child”.

Article 6 states that, after the first 90 days, abortions should be limited to cases in which the pregnancy or the delivery would imply a serious danger for the life of the woman or when pathological processes are ascertained, among which those relating to relevant anomalies or malformations of the conceived child thatwill determine a grave danger for the physical or psychical health of the woman have been ascertained.

- snip -

Law 194 and conscientious objection

According to the Annual Report on the Law 194 published by the Ministry of Health in 2012, as far as the consulting centers are concerned, at 35 years of the entry into force of the Law, there has been a reduction in the number of abortions in absolute terms, which is equally distributed throughout the national territory. The a decrease amounts to 50.4 percent between 1983 and 2010. Such a figure confirms the spirit that moved thelegislator at the moment of the drafting of the law, stated in Article 1, which contains the principle according to which the voluntary interruption of a pregnancy cannot beconsidered as a means for birth control.

Article 9 of the Law 194 disciplines the exercise of the conscientious objection by the sanitary personnel that, through a preventive declaration, affirms the will to be exonerated from the procedures connected to the interruption of the pregnancy. Thepossibility to conscientiously object concerns exclusively those activities that are specifically necessary and directly determining the abortion and not those to assist before and after the intervention. In order to ensure the access to health services throughout the national territory, Article 4 of the Law imposes upon the Regional administrations to control and guarantee the implementation of the procedures foreseen by the law also through the mobility of the personnel with measures that should be adequate to ensure the provision of services in such a way that neither the conscientious objectors nor the doctors are discriminated in their personal choices.

http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/socialcharter/complaints/CC87CaseDoc12_en.pdf

[AtheistCrusader]

7. They're pulling this shit in seattle too.

Can't ban it, but they can buy out all the hospitals, and then refuse service.

Only one regional hospital left that isn't catholic, or jointly operating with a catholic hospital element.

This is their end-run game plan.

[cleanhippie]

8. Just another example of how "religion poisons everything"