"We Did It for The Women"

Inspired by a pro-abortion manifesto signed by more than 300 prominent French women, a handful of Rome feminists tried in 1971 to produce a comparable document for the cause in Italy. For 18 months, the Italian activists chased after well-known women, begging for public support. What they got for their trouble was a handful of less than famous names. Their last desperate hope rested with a film star who was sympathetic and seemingly sold on signing. Then crushingly, at the last moment, with pen poised over paper, the actress--whose identity has been mercifully suppressed--bugged out. "No, I just can't," she confessed. "What would Mamma say?"

In the years since then, the voice of mamma has become considerably muted. Last week, after a long-running national debate that inflamed passions, scrambled political alignments and even toppled a government, the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of the Italian Parliament) overturned the nation's 47-year-old blanket ban on abortion, which dated back to the Fascist penal code of 1930, and delivered up one of Europe's most liberal legal abortion laws.

The secret ballot was closer than expected: 310 for, 296 against. Ironically, the tiny, anticlerical Radical Party, which had led the noisy vanguard of the whole abortion campaign, voted against the measure on the grounds that it did not go far enough. But the so-called "Abortion Front" parties --from the Communists to the right-of-center Liberals--still managed to overcome the opposition of the ruling Christian Democrats and the far-rightists, including the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement (M.S.I.). The bill next goes to the Senate, where, barring surprise defections, the pro-abortionists also have a majority.

The new law does not permit abortion on demand as such, but it does invest the woman with the final decision during the first 90 days of pregnancy. Rape, a malformed fetus, or circumstances in which the birth would constitute a "serious danger" to a woman's physical or psychological health or to her "social, economic or family" well-being would all be grounds for abortion.

In practice, a woman would first have to persuade a doctor to certify that an abortion was appropriate. But even if the doctor disagreed, the applicant would be required merely to wait seven days. Then she could present the dated request slip, signed by the examining physician, to a public hospital or clinic, which would provide a prompt--and free--legal operation. The law will also recognize "conscientious objectors" among devout Catholic doctors and other medical personnel, who will not be required to perform abortions if they register their objections within one month after the law becomes effective.

Another Milestone. Despite some criticisms, particularly of the requirement that parents of girls under 16 be consulted, there was satisfaction among proponents of the bill that Italy, following the 1970 legalization of divorce, had marked another milestone in progressive social legislation. At the same time, the abortion law represented yet another, more serious setback for the Roman Catholic Church and its influence over

Italian life. The Vatican had fought abortion every inch of the way. On New Year's Day, Pope Paul used his annual message to make an anti-abortion statement with the plea, "If you want peace, defend life."

In the final days of debate, the church rained a storm of telegrams upon the legislators. Uncomfortably, Premier Giulio Andreotti's church-backed, minority Christian Democratic government tried to steer clear of the issue with a stance of aloof neutrality. "Everyone remembers that it was abortion that brought down the last government and caused an early election," explained a Cabinet official, "and no party wants to see that happen again." Still--with a careful distinction between government and party--the Christian Democrats dutifully monopolized the final debate making 13 last-ditch speeches against the passage of the bill, then made an unsuccessful attempt to block it with a motion of unconstitutionality.

Once again it was Italy's steadily advancing Communist Party that was cast in a key role. The party had previously been opposed to easy abortion, believing that it should be regulated for the collective welfare and not left to "individualistic" prerogative. During a committee hearing on an earlier draft bill before the election last year, the Communists had voted with the Christian Democrats in favor of giving doctors, rather than women, the last word on abortion.

This time the Communists saw abortion as an issue whose time had come. Explained a Communist policymaker: "We did it for the women after we understood how deeply they felt about it as a cause of their own, and a cause that has already been won in most of the rest of Europe."

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