Controlling reproduction means controlling women. Controlling women seems to be a high priority for crotchety old men. But that doesn't really answer your question, it just rephrases it.
I think it is like anorexia. Someone who has no control over their own lives tries to control the few things they can. An anorexic controls their food, but a married man controls his wife and kids. It makes even the weakest person feel strong to have someone to boss around.
I zeroed in on khalic's mention of "far right populism" which I thought was a universal term, but skrebbel made it sound like that doesn't apply to Italy (but I still think it does), so I clarified.
The first thing she did in office was a order to be called "il signor presidente", masculine of the correct "la signora presidente".
She's not an old man but behaves as such and the fascist side of her support is strongly misogynist.
I don't think you need an analogy like that to explain why people want to control women. They want to control women for the same reason they want to control men. Is it any mystery why people seek power? Those with power can decide how to distribute the resources of the society in a way that preferences them and their inner circle.
Access to reproduction is one of the most basic resources a society has available. It is common for the old men to control the young men by being the ones to decide who gets access to women. "Work for us loyally, and we'll allow you to get married"
I don't think they are trying to control men. I'm not seeing any evidence of that. When I see a law that attacks women, it is very clearly targeted towards women, but I don't see anything that clearly targets men.
Controlling women means controlling men. The most basic way to do that is by controlling who is allowed to get married. Attacks against the reproductive rights of women are caused by a desire to avoid "side channels" by which a couple could avoid passing through the systems established to control marriage.
Society became much more complex than a tribal village where the elders decide everything, and so have the levels of indirection in how control of reproduction is wielded. The situation is also quite a bit more complicated now that populations are able to grow so far above the local carrying capacity of the land. Yet we can still trace a line back to when it was necessary for a community to collectively maintain the sustainability of their population by deciding how many children could be supported at any one time.
This is the kind of rational you arrive to, if you spend too much time in feminist circles and never bother to actually try to understand the other side. I can assure you that nobody thinks in terms of "controlling women".
> Controlling reproduction means controlling women. Controlling women seems to be a high priority for crotchety old men.
You ignore that so many leading anti-abortion activists are women. I think for example of Joanna Howe, [0] who is arguably the most prominent activist against abortion rights in contemporary Australia-and far from some “crotchety old man”, she is a 43 year old law professor.
The issue with abortion is that some think the fetus deserves legal protection because it is equivalent to a human baby. So, they don't think it should be killed. In Italy, abortion is allowed in the first 90 days. After that, it is illegal. These websites were providing abortion pills to be used past the 90 day period, which is illegal.
So, these websites were being blocked because they were engaged in illegal activity.
If someone is morally opposed to abortion, they don’t need to have one. That’s where it should end, there’s no need to control the bodies of others due to a moral belief that other people don’t hold.
That is unfortunate, but the opposing view entitles a fetus to use of another persons body. This is something I am not entitled to, even if a blood transfusion, marrow transplant, or organ donation would save my life with certainty.
The fetus is inside of an adult human with a life they’re living. The decision is theirs to make, nobody else should have input, but unfortunately that isn’t the case in some places.
Someone having an abortion have zero effect on a person who is against abortion but has never met them. The anti-abortion person should mind their own business.
I don’t believe in god and think religion is generally harmful but I don’t go around campaigning to eliminate religious freedoms. I don’t tell religious people I think their beliefs are ridiculous, I keep it to myself.
Abortion wasn’t even an issue in the US until Atwater->Reagan realized there were a bunch of religious people they could manipulate into voting for the GOP by making abortion a wedge issue.
Yes but... you used the word "belief". Nothing scientific there.
If the mother was raped and knows for sure she will not bring up her rapist's kid ... or if there is a possibility that letting the baby be born will kill the mother, MY belief is to follow the mother's wishes.
You are being downvoted, and I don't know why. The majority of abortions are a result of people getting pregnant and not wanting a baby. And that's alright, there's nothing wrong with that.
I say this as someone that is 100% pro-abortion. If a woman wants to not have a baby, it's her body, and her right to decide. The discussion ends there.
Life is hard in the best of times. It must suck to be brought into a world where your mother doesn't even fucking want you around.
Moreover, it's probably preferable that people that make poor decisions regarding pregnancy opt themselves out of the gene pool.
Even so, you are deliberately dismissing rape victims that got pregnant[1], what is their recourse? Or do you just care about the rights of a fetus while it's in utero and then they're on their own as soon as they pop out?
I linked to a study exploring the numbers in the US states where abortion was banned, not referring to Italy here. My response was to the "rape victim red herring" which i find incredibly distasteful.
Not all of us I would bet. One can believe the fetus is a human life, and still want to allow the mother ending it. Sure it’s rough, but this is a classic case of conflicting interest. Pretending the fetus isn’t human yet is just one of several ways to side with the mother’s decision. Malformations or danger to the mother’s life are two others. And then there’s the more radical position that as long as the fetus hasn’t left the womb, the mother’s autonomy is still more important than its life.
This last one is less a belief, (one week before birth the baby is clearly viable), than it is a value system. Though I’d be curious to see the statistics on countries that allow abortion up to birth itself. If it turns out practically no one aborts after 4 months or whatever, that particular point would be moot.
> This last one is less a belief, (one week before birth the baby is clearly viable), than it is a value system.
Upthread, a response to me indicated very clearly that, even at 1 day before delivery, it should be the mother's choice.
There's a lot of nuance here, with clearly many people stuck in denial: this is not a binary question. There's a spectrum, all the way from 1 day after conception to 1 day before delivery.
The pro-choicers are pretending that all the pro-lifers want to outlaw the morning after pill. The pro-choicers are also not doing themselves any favours by actually, on this story alone, positioning themselves as supporting 1-day-before-delivery abortions.
Everyone has a line they'll draw. Not everyone's line is in the same place.
So, providing information on how to carry out abortion after the 1st trimester in a country where abortion in the first 90 days is legal and free is not the disturbing part to you… it’s trying to prevent abortions after those 90 days.
I believe there’s something very wrong with your moral compass, pal.
The worse the experience of working life gets, the more important an idealized family life becomes for many downwardly mobile or precarious people. Most people's family lives cannot actually live up to this fantasy, so scapegoats - gender non-conforming people, feminists, immigrants - are required to deal with the cognitive dissonance.
There are several aspects to this. One is control over women. Another is panic over the idea that other people with darker skin tone might overrun us with their reproductive might; either by mating like rabbits, or straight up stealing our our women. (They’re ours, right? Riight?) Also, the Book said something like "Be fruitful and multiply".
The weird thing about Great Replacement bullshit, is how it manages to mix superiority complex with inferiority complex. Like viewing oneself as less attractive than the "inferior" brother accros the street, or believing in the superiority of one’s culture, and in natural selection, and be afraid of being overrun by an "inferior" one…
It is indeed legal, but gynaecologists can object to help for conscientious reasons (65% do) and in quite a few hospitals, 100% do object, especially in the south. So in practice access to it is not always that easy.
I don't think GP was making that argument (well, I didn't read it that way). He's just saying that access may not be easy.
[EDIT: I see GP did reply to parent, and he apparently was making that asinine argument :-/ Oh well, at least I interpreted original GP comment charitably]
of course doctors should not be forced, that's ridiculous, but the SSN should prioritise hiring non-objecting doctors, at least in areas where there isn't enough coverage (in the same way it should prioritise hiring other specialities as needed).
> of course doctors should not be forced, that's ridiculous, but the SSN should prioritise hiring non-objecting doctors, at least in areas where there isn't enough coverage (in the same way it should prioritise hiring other specialities as needed).
I agree, they should!
But what do you do if your society just does not have enough people (nevermind doctors) who share the beliefs of pro-choicers?
At the point where you cannot find enough people to carry out an order for one side of an issue, it's a signal that the society itself has already taken a stand on the issue.
Sure, but access is easy enough. Not worse than anything else than the government does.
Much better than--let's say--getting an MRI.
Looks like this thread has gotten the attention of weird activists that want to find injustice everywhere and jump to conclusion--as long as the conclusion is women oppressed and censored.
Agree about that. The question is whether all websites providing black-market potentially generous medications are being targeted or specifically just abortion pills. I genuinely do not know, this might be making the news but actually be part of a wide blockage.
> If access is not easy, there needs to be a different solution.
Indeed, access must be made easy. Abortion, through a pill or otherwise, should be accessible anywhere, freely, and any medical record should be kept absolutely secret, including from the family, especially if she’s underage.
I don’t think that’s the direction they’re headed though. I’m pretty sure in fact the whole point of allowing stuff like objection of conscience is to make abortion less accessible.
That is my point. If access is not easy, selling prescription drugs to anonymous buyers is not the solution - access must be made easy.
> I’m pretty sure in fact the whole point of allowing stuff like objection of conscience is to make abortion less accessible.
I don't think so. No one, whether a doctor or not, should be forced by the state to end the life of any being. That choice must be totally theirs to make, not the states.
I do not trust any state, government or ruler with the power to compel speech or action.
> No one, whether a doctor or not, should be forced by the state to end the life of any being.
I feel you. But that right not to kill, conflicts with the autonomy of women. Which is more important?
> I do not trust any state, government or ruler with the power to compel speech or action.
France, and many other countries, makes it a crime (misdemeanour I think?) not to help people. If I see someone about to die, and I could prevent that, and I don’t, then I could go to jail.
This is textbook compelled action, and I fully condone it. If you don’t help someone from immediate danger you’re trash, and you should pay the consequences.
> I feel you. But that right not to kill, conflicts with the autonomy of women. Which is more important?
The right to not kill, obviously. What kind of question is this? You want to judge someone for not being (in their minds) a murderer instead of a controller-of-other-people?
> This is textbook compelled action, and I fully condone it. If you don’t help someone from immediate danger you’re trash, and you should pay the consequences.
Sure, but we aren't talking about immediate danger. All those countries you list don't compel you to help someone who is in no immediate danger.
> If access is not easy, there needs to be a different solution.
The only way is to make access easy. If you make it hard, then demand for black market drugs will drive supply. Which in turn would drive a repressive machine. Sites blocked, people convicted and so on.
I don't know why anti-abortion activists are unable to understand it. The only working hypothesis they are actively resist any understanding. A dogmatic worldview can lead to such behavior.
> I don't know why anti-abortion activists are unable to understand it. The only working hypothesis they are actively resist any understanding. A dogmatic worldview can lead to such behavior.
The pro-lifers don't have a monopoly on stupid people - see above where a pro-choicer is arguing that abortion 1 day before delivery should be legal.
Abortion is legal in this country, and any woman can go to the hospital (as in the ER), or at a consultorio familiare to initiate the process. Both options are free of charge and free of judgement, especially the latter. As to why these two websites were rendered inaccessible it beats me, as there are many other local alternatives one may peruse, and they're all accessible. Hell, even the Italian Government Website has resources[1][2]!
I couldn't find any information, either. The only thing I was able to find were many posts on Reddit from women trying to get these websites to send them abortion pills.
I assume that this might be the reason why they got blocked--or if not a possibility.
I don't understand why women would need these websites, there are plenty of free resources like local hospitals and doctors who are generally completely fine with abortion.
Read the article. It's 67% of registered obgyns and fully 100% of some hospitals. Why would you believe it's 1 of 1000 in a world where countries consistently successfully create legislature targeting women?
In 2022 there were about 65k abortions in Italy, two thirds of which were with ru486. All of them completely legal and paid for by the national health care. Not sure there is a need for pills over mail.
It's great Italy it has the protections it does, but as long as there are practitioners or institutions that might not respect obtaining this healthcare (out of religion, belief system, whatever, the reason is irrelevant), there should be robust systems to avoid those challenges for those seeking said healthcare. Pills available by mail on demand, automated vending machines, etc.
As mentioned in the 1983 film "WarGames", "We ought to take the men out of the loop".
> Do you realize that abortion pills are potentially dangerous..? That's why you have doctors prescribing drugs
False. They've been repeatedly shown in studies to be safe for home use. Having an abortion is generally safer than continuing a pregnancy to term. Please update your priors.
> In 2019, it was reported that 67% of Italian gynecologists were registered as conscientious objectors and multiple hospitals reported having a 100% conscientious objection rate.
Finding an obiettore is a somewhat rare circumstance in a hospital, but it's unlikely in a consultorio familiare; those are structures whose only purpose is reproductive health, gynecological care, social services, and psychological consult, especially aimed at teens and women. If you're an objector you generally don't go out of your way to work there.
I’m sure you’re aware that it _greatly_ depends on the region you’re living in. The fact that consultori are for reproductive health doesn’t mean that there are no obiettori: for some of them the purpose of those structures are exactly to prevent abortions. There are many accounts of women who were pushed to not interrupting a pregnancy.
> As to why these two websites were rendered inaccessible it beats me, as there are many other local alternatives one may peruse, and they're all accessible.
Because, presumably, abortion is legal only in specific circumstances (first trimester, I imagine) and these websites are bypassing that.
FTFA:
> Today, Women on Web facilitates online access to abortion pills
I'd expect any website that provides access to non-over-the-counter pills is operating against the law. I mean, it'd be nice if I can buy antibiotics online, but I can't in my jurisdiction.
Ah that does it. Abortion pills are not candies. There's a reason why they are expected to be used in a hospital setting, with medical personnel nearby. If these websites facilitate the distribution of prescription meds, they're no different from other "online pharmacies" and get the same treatment
in this part of the world, Mexico is known for public pharmacies that sell wildly-strong drugs of different kinds easily.. I doubt there are any websites that list what you can actually get if you walk in with cash
In Hungary abortion is technically legal but only surgically, and the public health system is mental torture including being forced to listen to the heartbeat of the fetus (thanks to our local fascist party). Women on Web is a million times more humane. It's not like anyone thinks "oh I'm pregnant I'll just pop a pill and it's solved".
It's an unreasonable argument because the people who treat medication like candy are far less common than the people who are restricted from seeking medical assistance due to repressive family situations.
In Italy these services are thankfully not restricted in the same way they are in, say, America - but there are still plenty of life situations (like suffering SA from a family member) where shame, social pressures and threats can cause the regular medical system to be hard to access.
That is a far more reasonable scenario than "I just love popping abortion pills!"
There is ample evidence that video appointments followed by pills through the mail are safe and effective with very low rates of complications that can be addressed in a local ER if needed.
>There's a reason why they are expected to be used in a hospital setting, with medical personnel nearby.
Not really true. They've been repeatedly shown in studies to be safe for home use. They're evaluating packaging and instructions for possible OTC sale in the the future:
> They've been repeatedly shown in studies to be safe for home use.
In that case I fully support the organisations involved to campaign to make abortion pills OTC legal. That does not mean that I support them skirting the law as it is now.
> Both options are free of charge and free of judgement, especially the latter.
Maybe they are free of charge, idk, but they doesn't seem to be free of judgement. From the article:
Even if an abortion seeker is within the 12 week gestational limit and has access to a local hospital, a doctor can turn them away on the basis of conscientious objection, which legally allows any doctor to deny a patient an abortion on moral grounds. In 2019, it was reported that 67% of Italian gynecologists were registered as conscientious objectors and multiple hospitals reported having a 100% conscientious objection rate.
Even finding a doctor seem to be an issue, because most of them would tell you that they are more moral than you think and wouldn't do an abortion.
If a care seeker can find a doctor who is willing to perform an abortion, they must endure a 7-day waiting period between their initial request for an abortion and the procedure (which can push care seekers past the 12 week gestational limit).
So they believe that women are probably mistaken and don't know what they want, don't they? Or maybe they just want to make it harder to fit abortion in the 12 week limit?
In April 2024, the Italian parliament passed a measure allowing anti-abortion activists to enter abortion consultation clinics.
These activists I'm sure wouldn't judge. No way. Would they?
Let me help answer that question by abstracting away the charged element and disambiguating the most common point of actual logical contention:
Should doctors be forced to perform <P:procedure> they don't ~~condone~~[A:believe is medically safe and appropriate for a diagnosis|B:wish to support or endorse on non-medical grounds].
To me, and for most reasonable people I've properly been able to have a conversation with on this subject, the answer is universally an emphatic NO for the vast majority of possible procedures P, in both cases A and B. However, where things diverge is that most people believe there should be consequences for the doctor refusing on grounds B to perform a procedure other doctors would consider to fit the criteria of A, for virtually every P I've thought of. These consequences typically include removal of their license to practice medicine, and may include civil or criminal penalties in egregious cases where a doctor might claim religious objection to something like CPR in a situation where they were the only doctor working at an ER and the CPR was clearly medically necessary, for example.
It's bizarre to me that countries in Europe can just compel their ISPs to block websites completely without any judicial review. That kind of thing would run afoul of all kinds of first amendment litigation in the US. The FBI will occasionally seize a domain, but only after a court order.
It is a temporary solution. Events of these kind tend to escalate up to a obligatory VPN for just using Internet, and beyond that to VPNs that resist blocking, like amnezia-wg, xray and suchlike.
You see, they block, then they notice that blocks do not work, they try harder. And still harder, till the situation comes to impasse, when to try harder means to shut off the Internet. It stops there, everyone is using some kind of DPI resistant VPN, paying more for internet access, and ISP spending more to block what politicians deem worthy of blocks. A pure waste of money. Though datacenters are happy, because they host a ton of VPNs.
absolute freedom of speech is not a value or constitutional right in most european countries. I don't understand why americans can't get comfortable with the notion that other countries have different laws. There's plenty of things that could be considered bizarre and arbitrary in the US form the perspective of a european, I know full well being one living in California for 20 years.
I think Americans get that other countries have different laws. But freedom of speech, an ideal we lifted from European enlightenment thinkers, is so important to our culture and national mythos that it is a little surprising how differently it's valued in much of Europe.
I'm sure the culture shock goes both ways though, as you say. Curious about your perspective on the the most bizarre / arbitrary things in the US?
If other websites exist about this topic, why are these two specifically being censored and by who? If abortion is legal (within a set of guidelines), what laws exist that these sites are breaking or close to breaking that might lead them to be censored?
> If abortion is legal (within a set of guidelines), what laws exist that these sites are breaking or close to breaking that might lead them to be censored?
Mailing out prescription drugs without a prescription.
This is obviously a contentious issue, but it's important to understand why.
Catholics are "pro birth" in general, but it really doesn't have much in scripture to support it; there is of course the "Quiverfull" movement which aims for each birth to be "an arrow in the quiver of God's army"
So for all of that, it's clearly a religious viewpoint and that raises serious 1A questions.
A question I've never seen addressed by those who hew to this belief system:
Apparently roughly 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, which is (using the belief system above), God is performing an abortion. How does that reconcile with that stance.
My personal take is simple: "every baby should be a wanted baby"
The politics of it started half a century ago, and the politicizing of abortion was very much intentional:
khalic | 5 hours ago
fhdkweig | 5 hours ago
I think it is like anorexia. Someone who has no control over their own lives tries to control the few things they can. An anorexic controls their food, but a married man controls his wife and kids. It makes even the weakest person feel strong to have someone to boss around.
skrebbel | 4 hours ago
Such as Giorgia Meloni?
fhdkweig | 4 hours ago
altern8 | 4 hours ago
fhdkweig | 4 hours ago
lolgab | 4 hours ago
philipov | 4 hours ago
Access to reproduction is one of the most basic resources a society has available. It is common for the old men to control the young men by being the ones to decide who gets access to women. "Work for us loyally, and we'll allow you to get married"
fhdkweig | 4 hours ago
philipov | 4 hours ago
Society became much more complex than a tribal village where the elders decide everything, and so have the levels of indirection in how control of reproduction is wielded. The situation is also quite a bit more complicated now that populations are able to grow so far above the local carrying capacity of the land. Yet we can still trace a line back to when it was necessary for a community to collectively maintain the sustainability of their population by deciding how many children could be supported at any one time.
lelanthran | 4 hours ago
Drafts? They typically only targeted men, with a large possibility of maiming or death as the result.
philipov | 4 hours ago
nailer | 4 hours ago
The topic is not access to reproduction. Nobody is controlling access to pregnancy.
> the ones to decide who gets access to women.
Nor is access to women.
geremiiah | 4 hours ago
skissane | 4 hours ago
You ignore that so many leading anti-abortion activists are women. I think for example of Joanna Howe, [0] who is arguably the most prominent activist against abortion rights in contemporary Australia-and far from some “crotchety old man”, she is a 43 year old law professor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Howe
whateverboat | 5 hours ago
joshuaheard | 4 hours ago
So, these websites were being blocked because they were engaged in illegal activity.
krunck | 3 hours ago
Maybe those blocking the sites are not acting on behalf of law enforcement but rather their own ideas of legality and morality.
CamperBob2 | 4 hours ago
And in the US [1,2]:
2016 election: Approximately 39% to 42% of female voters cast their ballots for Trump.
2020 election: Approximately 44% of female voters cast their ballots for Trump.
2024 election: Approximately 46% of female voters cast their ballots for Trump
Like it or not -- and make no mistake, I don't like it -- many women want this.
----------
1: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte...
2: https://www.cfr.org/articles/women-voters-pivotal-role-elect...
jamesbelchamber | 4 hours ago
Argonaut998 | 4 hours ago
I don't know why people are being so (deliberatively?) reductive ITT.
quickthrowman | 4 hours ago
cocoto | 3 hours ago
nancyminusone | 2 hours ago
quickthrowman | 53 minutes ago
Someone having an abortion have zero effect on a person who is against abortion but has never met them. The anti-abortion person should mind their own business.
I don’t believe in god and think religion is generally harmful but I don’t go around campaigning to eliminate religious freedoms. I don’t tell religious people I think their beliefs are ridiculous, I keep it to myself.
Abortion wasn’t even an issue in the US until Atwater->Reagan realized there were a bunch of religious people they could manipulate into voting for the GOP by making abortion a wedge issue.
realo | 4 hours ago
If the mother was raped and knows for sure she will not bring up her rapist's kid ... or if there is a possibility that letting the baby be born will kill the mother, MY belief is to follow the mother's wishes.
It's her body and her life.
mbmbn | 4 hours ago
And please stop that rape red herring. The overwhelming majority of abortions are carried out as contraceptive methods.
surgical_fire | 3 hours ago
I say this as someone that is 100% pro-abortion. If a woman wants to not have a baby, it's her body, and her right to decide. The discussion ends there.
Life is hard in the best of times. It must suck to be brought into a world where your mother doesn't even fucking want you around.
Moreover, it's probably preferable that people that make poor decisions regarding pregnancy opt themselves out of the gene pool.
dudefeliciano | 3 hours ago
[1]https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
lelanthran | 3 hours ago
To have the legally available and free abortion that is offered within the first 90 days of their rape?
dudefeliciano | 2 hours ago
Manuel_D | 2 hours ago
dudefeliciano | 2 hours ago
nailer | 3 hours ago
• Survival rates begin to appear (still low) around 22 weeks (roughly 5–35% depending on the study, active treatment, and hospital, with high rates of complications). https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/154/4/e20240...
hbn | 3 hours ago
loup-vaillant | 3 hours ago
Not all of us I would bet. One can believe the fetus is a human life, and still want to allow the mother ending it. Sure it’s rough, but this is a classic case of conflicting interest. Pretending the fetus isn’t human yet is just one of several ways to side with the mother’s decision. Malformations or danger to the mother’s life are two others. And then there’s the more radical position that as long as the fetus hasn’t left the womb, the mother’s autonomy is still more important than its life.
This last one is less a belief, (one week before birth the baby is clearly viable), than it is a value system. Though I’d be curious to see the statistics on countries that allow abortion up to birth itself. If it turns out practically no one aborts after 4 months or whatever, that particular point would be moot.
lelanthran | 3 hours ago
Upthread, a response to me indicated very clearly that, even at 1 day before delivery, it should be the mother's choice.
There's a lot of nuance here, with clearly many people stuck in denial: this is not a binary question. There's a spectrum, all the way from 1 day after conception to 1 day before delivery.
The pro-choicers are pretending that all the pro-lifers want to outlaw the morning after pill. The pro-choicers are also not doing themselves any favours by actually, on this story alone, positioning themselves as supporting 1-day-before-delivery abortions.
Everyone has a line they'll draw. Not everyone's line is in the same place.
lelanthran | 3 hours ago
And you think the opposing arguments are?
mbmbn | 4 hours ago
I believe there’s something very wrong with your moral compass, pal.
dudefeliciano | 3 hours ago
bwestergard | 4 hours ago
loup-vaillant | 3 hours ago
The weird thing about Great Replacement bullshit, is how it manages to mix superiority complex with inferiority complex. Like viewing oneself as less attractive than the "inferior" brother accros the street, or believing in the superiority of one’s culture, and in natural selection, and be afraid of being overrun by an "inferior" one…
altern8 | 5 hours ago
Women seeking terminations in the first 90 days of pregnancy are protected under law 194.
From what I got, these organizations illegally sent women abortion pills.
At least when I was young and still living in Italy, you could walk into a hospital and they'd give you abortion pills or day after pills for free.
I guess it has to be a hospital/doctor and not a random website?
Not sure.
gpderetta | 4 hours ago
altern8 | 4 hours ago
So, you think the government should force doctors to perform abortions, like putting them in jail if they don't want to do it?
lelanthran | 4 hours ago
[EDIT: I see GP did reply to parent, and he apparently was making that asinine argument :-/ Oh well, at least I interpreted original GP comment charitably]
gpderetta | 3 hours ago
lelanthran | 2 hours ago
I agree, they should!
But what do you do if your society just does not have enough people (nevermind doctors) who share the beliefs of pro-choicers?
At the point where you cannot find enough people to carry out an order for one side of an issue, it's a signal that the society itself has already taken a stand on the issue.
gpderetta | 4 hours ago
realo | 4 hours ago
Big fine? Of course.
lelanthran | 4 hours ago
Understood, but the solution cannot be "allow prescription drugs to be sold online".
If access is not easy, there needs to be a different solution.
altern8 | 4 hours ago
Much better than--let's say--getting an MRI.
Looks like this thread has gotten the attention of weird activists that want to find injustice everywhere and jump to conclusion--as long as the conclusion is women oppressed and censored.
gpderetta | 4 hours ago
loup-vaillant | 3 hours ago
Indeed, access must be made easy. Abortion, through a pill or otherwise, should be accessible anywhere, freely, and any medical record should be kept absolutely secret, including from the family, especially if she’s underage.
I don’t think that’s the direction they’re headed though. I’m pretty sure in fact the whole point of allowing stuff like objection of conscience is to make abortion less accessible.
lelanthran | 3 hours ago
That is my point. If access is not easy, selling prescription drugs to anonymous buyers is not the solution - access must be made easy.
> I’m pretty sure in fact the whole point of allowing stuff like objection of conscience is to make abortion less accessible.
I don't think so. No one, whether a doctor or not, should be forced by the state to end the life of any being. That choice must be totally theirs to make, not the states.
I do not trust any state, government or ruler with the power to compel speech or action.
loup-vaillant | 3 hours ago
I feel you. But that right not to kill, conflicts with the autonomy of women. Which is more important?
> I do not trust any state, government or ruler with the power to compel speech or action.
France, and many other countries, makes it a crime (misdemeanour I think?) not to help people. If I see someone about to die, and I could prevent that, and I don’t, then I could go to jail.
This is textbook compelled action, and I fully condone it. If you don’t help someone from immediate danger you’re trash, and you should pay the consequences.
lelanthran | 3 hours ago
The right to not kill, obviously. What kind of question is this? You want to judge someone for not being (in their minds) a murderer instead of a controller-of-other-people?
> This is textbook compelled action, and I fully condone it. If you don’t help someone from immediate danger you’re trash, and you should pay the consequences.
Sure, but we aren't talking about immediate danger. All those countries you list don't compel you to help someone who is in no immediate danger.
ordu | 3 hours ago
The only way is to make access easy. If you make it hard, then demand for black market drugs will drive supply. Which in turn would drive a repressive machine. Sites blocked, people convicted and so on.
I don't know why anti-abortion activists are unable to understand it. The only working hypothesis they are actively resist any understanding. A dogmatic worldview can lead to such behavior.
lelanthran | 3 hours ago
The pro-lifers don't have a monopoly on stupid people - see above where a pro-choicer is arguing that abortion 1 day before delivery should be legal.
ordu | 2 hours ago
Tu quoque[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque_defense
eur0pa | 4 hours ago
[1] https://www.salute.gov.it/new/it/tema/salute-della-donna/
[2] https://www.salute.gov.it/new/it/tema/salute-della-donna/int...
altern8 | 4 hours ago
I assume that this might be the reason why they got blocked--or if not a possibility.
I don't understand why women would need these websites, there are plenty of free resources like local hospitals and doctors who are generally completely fine with abortion.
throwway120385 | 4 hours ago
flaviolivolsi | 4 hours ago
You sure about that? Unfortunately there's a thing called "obiezione di coscienza" (TL;DR: doctors opposing abortion because they're catholics). Feel free to translate this article: https://www.editorialedomani.it/fatti/aborto-obiezione-cosci...
altern8 | 4 hours ago
sllewely | 4 hours ago
altern8 | 4 hours ago
We don't need random websites to hand out prescription drugs to kids.
kamma4434 | 3 hours ago
toomuchtodo | 3 hours ago
As mentioned in the 1983 film "WarGames", "We ought to take the men out of the loop".
altern8 | 16 minutes ago
toomuchtodo | 12 minutes ago
False. They've been repeatedly shown in studies to be safe for home use. Having an abortion is generally safer than continuing a pregnancy to term. Please update your priors.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32912726/
https://www.ansirh.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/medicatio...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pregnancy-is-far-...
https://www.plancpills.org/
https://www.plancpills.org/guide-how-to-get-abortion-pills
timpera | 4 hours ago
OkayPhysicist | 4 hours ago
altern8 | 16 minutes ago
eur0pa | 4 hours ago
ron_k | 4 hours ago
kamma4434 | 3 hours ago
lelanthran | 4 hours ago
Because, presumably, abortion is legal only in specific circumstances (first trimester, I imagine) and these websites are bypassing that.
FTFA:
> Today, Women on Web facilitates online access to abortion pills
I'd expect any website that provides access to non-over-the-counter pills is operating against the law. I mean, it'd be nice if I can buy antibiotics online, but I can't in my jurisdiction.
eur0pa | 4 hours ago
mistrial9 | 4 hours ago
chpatrick | 4 hours ago
setopt | 4 hours ago
munk-a | 4 hours ago
In Italy these services are thankfully not restricted in the same way they are in, say, America - but there are still plenty of life situations (like suffering SA from a family member) where shame, social pressures and threats can cause the regular medical system to be hard to access.
That is a far more reasonable scenario than "I just love popping abortion pills!"
lokar | 4 hours ago
bragr | 3 hours ago
Not really true. They've been repeatedly shown in studies to be safe for home use. They're evaluating packaging and instructions for possible OTC sale in the the future:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl...
toomuchtodo | 3 hours ago
https://www.plancpills.org/guide-how-to-get-abortion-pills
(US centric)
lelanthran | 3 hours ago
In that case I fully support the organisations involved to campaign to make abortion pills OTC legal. That does not mean that I support them skirting the law as it is now.
ordu | 4 hours ago
Maybe they are free of charge, idk, but they doesn't seem to be free of judgement. From the article:
Even if an abortion seeker is within the 12 week gestational limit and has access to a local hospital, a doctor can turn them away on the basis of conscientious objection, which legally allows any doctor to deny a patient an abortion on moral grounds. In 2019, it was reported that 67% of Italian gynecologists were registered as conscientious objectors and multiple hospitals reported having a 100% conscientious objection rate.
Even finding a doctor seem to be an issue, because most of them would tell you that they are more moral than you think and wouldn't do an abortion.
If a care seeker can find a doctor who is willing to perform an abortion, they must endure a 7-day waiting period between their initial request for an abortion and the procedure (which can push care seekers past the 12 week gestational limit).
So they believe that women are probably mistaken and don't know what they want, don't they? Or maybe they just want to make it harder to fit abortion in the 12 week limit?
In April 2024, the Italian parliament passed a measure allowing anti-abortion activists to enter abortion consultation clinics.
These activists I'm sure wouldn't judge. No way. Would they?
exolymph | 2 hours ago
secretsatan | 2 hours ago
DaFranker | 2 hours ago
Should doctors be forced to perform <P:procedure> they don't ~~condone~~[A:believe is medically safe and appropriate for a diagnosis|B:wish to support or endorse on non-medical grounds].
To me, and for most reasonable people I've properly been able to have a conversation with on this subject, the answer is universally an emphatic NO for the vast majority of possible procedures P, in both cases A and B. However, where things diverge is that most people believe there should be consequences for the doctor refusing on grounds B to perform a procedure other doctors would consider to fit the criteria of A, for virtually every P I've thought of. These consequences typically include removal of their license to practice medicine, and may include civil or criminal penalties in egregious cases where a doctor might claim religious objection to something like CPR in a situation where they were the only doctor working at an ER and the CPR was clearly medically necessary, for example.
ordu | an hour ago
petcat | 4 hours ago
drnick1 | 4 hours ago
ordu | 3 hours ago
You see, they block, then they notice that blocks do not work, they try harder. And still harder, till the situation comes to impasse, when to try harder means to shut off the Internet. It stops there, everyone is using some kind of DPI resistant VPN, paying more for internet access, and ISP spending more to block what politicians deem worthy of blocks. A pure waste of money. Though datacenters are happy, because they host a ton of VPNs.
luckydata | 3 hours ago
eigencoder | an hour ago
I'm sure the culture shock goes both ways though, as you say. Curious about your perspective on the the most bizarre / arbitrary things in the US?
arlattimore | 3 hours ago
lelanthran | 3 hours ago
Mailing out prescription drugs without a prescription.
pstuart | an hour ago
Catholics are "pro birth" in general, but it really doesn't have much in scripture to support it; there is of course the "Quiverfull" movement which aims for each birth to be "an arrow in the quiver of God's army"
So for all of that, it's clearly a religious viewpoint and that raises serious 1A questions.
A question I've never seen addressed by those who hew to this belief system:
Apparently roughly 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, which is (using the belief system above), God is performing an abortion. How does that reconcile with that stance.
My personal take is simple: "every baby should be a wanted baby"
The politics of it started half a century ago, and the politicizing of abortion was very much intentional:
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/04/1096154028/the-movement-again...
It's important to have discussions based on logic and facts, rather than emotion. It will be interesting to see how that plays out here.
ieatcandlewax | 8 minutes ago
It might have re-emerged as abortion became more in vogue in the early 20th century, but the politics of it have existed since ancient rome.
https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/article/infanticide-in-ancient...
The rest of your argument is a strawman, you're imagining someone who disagrees with you and giving them weird arguments.