In a move Canada would do well to follow, Italy is allowing pro-life groups space in counseling centers for women seeking abortion. Italy’s Premier, Giorgia Meloni, points out how this simply offers real choice to women. When life-affirming options and meaningful support are presented instead of only abortion, women are empowered to make better choices for themselves and for their pre-born children.
Abortion within the first trimester was legalized in Italy in 1978. Since then, publicly funded counseling centers have been available “to advise pregnant women of their rights and services offered if they want to terminate the pregnancies.” Meloni is now expanding counseling services to include voices that support and promote motherhood. She says this was always the intention of the 1978 law and has simply not yet been put into practice.
While Italy progresses towards real choice, Canada continues to regress. Rather than ensure women have access to all available options, we’ve become a country that implements so-called “safe access zones.” Also called bubble zones, many provinces have enacted spaces where sharing a pro-life message with a woman seeking abortion is actually illegal. Instead of offering women meaningful choice, most provinces have banned pro-life speech, signage, or other materials around abortion providers. Pro-abortion materials, though, are not limited in any way.
The idea seems to be that women might be intimidated or upset if someone disagrees with their choice to abort, and they should be protected from feeling bad about their choice. But are women so weak that they need protection from dissenting opinions? Does unquestioning affirmation of someone’s choices make them right?
To suggest that abortion is the only choice, let alone the best choice, is to leave women without any choice at all. Women entering an abortion clinic or hospital for an abortion are already facing a difficult situation. Cutting them off from voices that want to support and encourage them does not do them any favours. Instead, it perpetuates a society that tells pregnant women they are better off alone.
Pro-life voices belong in places where women are seeking abortions. Women need their presence. Pre-born children need their presence. Italy is doing the right thing by ensuring women seeking abortion have access to life-affirming choices, not just information about their right to kill their child.