(22 Jun 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rome – 22 June 2024
1. Demonstrators running holding a banner and waving flags
2. Various of demonstration
3. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Marco Andreoni, demonstrator:
“(Our) message is that we are absolutely against law 194 (abortion law). We know that there are those who consider us, who are against this law, to be troglodytes, backward, but we are against law 194, against abortion, we are pro-life.”
4. Various of demonstration
5. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Alessandra Datini, demonstrator:
“Society and laws should be made to promote the quality of life. A mother, a girl, who has difficulties, if she is helped, has the will to live and to give life.”
6. Demonstrators marching and holding a banner reading (Italian): "Let us choose life"
7. Close of sign reading (Italian): "Human rights begin in the human womb"
8. Various of demonstration
STORYLINE:
Around a thousand people marched through the streets of central Rome on Saturday to demonstrate against the laws on abortion and euthanasia.
The demonstration was called by the ‘Pro Vita & Famiglia’ association, an association that “defends the right to life from conception to natural death, promotes the family founded on marriage between a man and a woman,” as stated on its website.
“We know that there are those who consider us, who are against this law, to be troglodytes, backward, but we are against law 194, against abortion, we are pro-life,” said demonstrators Marco Andreoni.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who campaigned on a slogan of “God, fatherland and family,” has prioritized encouraging women to have babies to reverse Italy’s demographic crisis.
Abortion has been legal since 1978 and Meloni has insisted she won’t roll back the law and merely wants to implement it fully.
But her forces recently passed legislation allowing anti-abortion groups to have access to women considering abortions at public health centers where they go for counseling.
For those on the political right, the amendment merely fulfills the original intent of the 1978 law legalizing abortion, which included provisions to discourage the procedure and support motherhood.
For the left-wing opposition, the decision chips away at abortion rights that opponents had warned would follow Meloni’s 2022 election victory.
Some divisions had also emerged over the wording of the final declaration of the recent G7 summit, with disagreement over the inclusion of a reference to abortion.
The final statement, released on June 14, omitted the word “abortion” but did reference the need to promote “reproductive health and rights."
AP video shot by Paolo Lucariello
Production: Francesco Sportelli
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