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]!
> 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?
> 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
>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.
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.
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".
Friendly reminder that at the 6th week, when the heartbeat is detectable, the body is still undecided whether it will keep the fetus. It's not an indicator of anything - just something we're emotionally attached to as humans.
20-25% otherwise healthy pregnancies end spontaneously before the 12th week and it's a mechanism used in non-surgical abortion.
At the 8th week my SO's gynecologist made an offhand remark not to get attached just yet, because we were still within the window where that happens.
> but I also think that it's a good idea to know what you're doing
Why do so many people say this about women and their bodies? You seriously think the vast majority of women considering an abortion haven’t given it much thought? Should they all have to face more obstructions and guilt trips and patronizing lectures because a handful maybe don’t? It’s ridiculous.
As for the “heartbeat” standard, I’m not getting in to it, suffice to say that should not be a bar here for deciding a woman’s rights.
> I stand by this comment, downvote all you like folks.
I wasn’t going to until this part of your comment.
They are just applying the same logic behind all prescription medication to abortion pills.
To this day, despite having taken them for the past 30 years, I still require a new prescription for Adderall because society deemed the addiction risk too high to avoid inserting a doctor into the equation every 30 days.
Abortifacients can cause the death of the person taking them. That’s something no one wants.
Can some people manage the risks of prescription medication on their own? Yes, but like with Adderall, society tends to lean towards caution and considers a doctor’s visit to be morally neutral as doctors aren’t expected to moralize and guilt but perform a medical service.
Personally, I think a doctor who guilts someone over medication should have their license revoked. There’s a time and place for such feelings but medical interventions are life and death.
> 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".
Hang on, how is listening to the heartbeat mental torture?
Look, I'm generally pro-abortion, but I consider it a continuous spectrum and not a binary switch. At some fuzzy point the foetus is more than a collection of cells. The whole argument is "where is that point?"
Abortion 1 month after conception? I can't really argue against. Abortion 1 day before birth? That's clearly already a child and I will object.
If it was so clear-cut the issue wouldn't be so polarising.
> That's clearly already a child and I will object.
Not your body, not your choice.
Late stage abortions in order to protect the live of the pregnant woman happen. Unviable pregnancies happen. You know what happens in countries where abortion laws are so strict that even a medical emergency will land the doctor in legal trouble? The pregnant woman dies during or before childbirth.
> Hang on, how is listening to the heartbeat mental torture?
It's guilt-tripping based on an unscientific view of pregnancy. A foetus' heart starts beating way before it is even remotely close to being a child rather than a lump of cells.
> If it was so clear-cut the issue wouldn't be so polarising.
It's polarising because the topic is so very useful to get religious people who want to impose their holy book on everyone else to vote for you.
It's torture because abortion is never a trivial decision to make - by the time a person has decided to get an abortion and not become a parent we should respect their wishes. If a decision has been made there's no reason to cause pointless emotional grief before executing the operation.
It is mainly so because of lack of education and emotional manipulation into mixing up human biology and human personhood. Heartbeat doesn’t make a person. It’s not even a requirement to be a person (people with continuous-flow artificial hearts lack it). The first specks of personhood appear a lot later in the process.
A normal sane reaction is “yeah, there’s already a working cardiovascular system, better stop it before the organism develops even further.”
This said, it’s an obviously pointless and harmful delay. There is no reason to check a heartbeat of a fetus if a mother decides she doesn’t want to carry it.
> Hang on, how is listening to the heartbeat mental torture?
How about if the state decided that it wouldn't force you to donate your organs to some dying person who needed them, but every time there was a person who needed your your organs and you declined you would have to sit and listen to their heartbeat for 20 minutes. Really sit and think about the person you're deciding to kill. After all, if you don't give your body to someone who needs it, you've killed them.
"Torture" is definitely hyperbolic, but being forced to listen to the heartbeat of the fetus is not something that's based on any kind of science or rational argument, it's quite transparently emotional manipulation.
I agree with you that it's a delicate issue, I really do. I'm also tired of taking infinite psychic damage trying to steel-man the arguments of people who are clearly not interested in operating at the level of steel.
The whole point is to imply you are killing a baby. Like literally. The only reason for that law is that.
There is no medical reason. It does not address rational part of decisiom making either. It is an attempt at forced emotional guilting by medical professional. And to drag you through it.
Just want to point out, it’s polarising because it’s a wedge issues that divides voting blocks neatly, and nothing to do with it being The Issue that it is.
More people die from obesity, cars, flu, preventable illness, etc. But we discuss endless this one issue… it’s for political science reasons not humanity/moral/etc reasons.
It's different from those other cases because it's like getting in a car accident and other people saying you can't get treatment because it's against their religious values, or saying you're not allowed to lose weight because they don't like it.
> Clearly you believe in the primacy of preserving life. I am wondering if your belief extends to after the child is born?Clearly you believe in the primacy of preserving life. I am wondering if your belief extends to after the child is born?
Are you suggesting that, because I object to abortion a day before delivery, that I must be some kind of misogynistic monster?
Because that's where the line is drawn in this current subthread - 1 day before delivery. If you cannot understand that people consider that a child (i.e. 1 day before delivery) then you have no hope of swaying your audience to your side of the argument at all!
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
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!"
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.
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".
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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 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.
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".
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.
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]!
[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...
> 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?
> 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
>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:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl...
> 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.
https://www.plancpills.org/
https://www.plancpills.org/guide-how-to-get-abortion-pills
(US centric)
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.
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".
[flagged]
I don’t think any woman who seeks an abortion, is unaware that it will kill the foetus. Having to listen to the heartbeat seems performative IMO.
The heartbeat develops in weeks 5-6 and can be heard from around week 10. You can have a legal abortion in Italy until 90 days/~13 weeks.
AFAIK it’s 14 weeks in France and Spain, 18 weeks in Denmark and Sweden, 22 in NL etc. just for some context.
Friendly reminder that at the 6th week, when the heartbeat is detectable, the body is still undecided whether it will keep the fetus. It's not an indicator of anything - just something we're emotionally attached to as humans.
20-25% otherwise healthy pregnancies end spontaneously before the 12th week and it's a mechanism used in non-surgical abortion.
At the 8th week my SO's gynecologist made an offhand remark not to get attached just yet, because we were still within the window where that happens.
> but I also think that it's a good idea to know what you're doing
Why do so many people say this about women and their bodies? You seriously think the vast majority of women considering an abortion haven’t given it much thought? Should they all have to face more obstructions and guilt trips and patronizing lectures because a handful maybe don’t? It’s ridiculous.
As for the “heartbeat” standard, I’m not getting in to it, suffice to say that should not be a bar here for deciding a woman’s rights.
> I stand by this comment, downvote all you like folks.
I wasn’t going to until this part of your comment.
They are just applying the same logic behind all prescription medication to abortion pills.
To this day, despite having taken them for the past 30 years, I still require a new prescription for Adderall because society deemed the addiction risk too high to avoid inserting a doctor into the equation every 30 days.
Abortifacients can cause the death of the person taking them. That’s something no one wants.
Can some people manage the risks of prescription medication on their own? Yes, but like with Adderall, society tends to lean towards caution and considers a doctor’s visit to be morally neutral as doctors aren’t expected to moralize and guilt but perform a medical service.
Personally, I think a doctor who guilts someone over medication should have their license revoked. There’s a time and place for such feelings but medical interventions are life and death.
He is talking about abortion writ large, not the relative risk of a specific medication. He’s even making an appeal to the “heart beat rule.”
[dead]
> 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".
Hang on, how is listening to the heartbeat mental torture?
Look, I'm generally pro-abortion, but I consider it a continuous spectrum and not a binary switch. At some fuzzy point the foetus is more than a collection of cells. The whole argument is "where is that point?"
Abortion 1 month after conception? I can't really argue against. Abortion 1 day before birth? That's clearly already a child and I will object.
If it was so clear-cut the issue wouldn't be so polarising.
> That's clearly already a child and I will object.
Not your body, not your choice.
Late stage abortions in order to protect the live of the pregnant woman happen. Unviable pregnancies happen. You know what happens in countries where abortion laws are so strict that even a medical emergency will land the doctor in legal trouble? The pregnant woman dies during or before childbirth.
> Hang on, how is listening to the heartbeat mental torture?
It's guilt-tripping based on an unscientific view of pregnancy. A foetus' heart starts beating way before it is even remotely close to being a child rather than a lump of cells.
> If it was so clear-cut the issue wouldn't be so polarising.
It's polarising because the topic is so very useful to get religious people who want to impose their holy book on everyone else to vote for you.
It's torture because abortion is never a trivial decision to make - by the time a person has decided to get an abortion and not become a parent we should respect their wishes. If a decision has been made there's no reason to cause pointless emotional grief before executing the operation.
It is mainly so because of lack of education and emotional manipulation into mixing up human biology and human personhood. Heartbeat doesn’t make a person. It’s not even a requirement to be a person (people with continuous-flow artificial hearts lack it). The first specks of personhood appear a lot later in the process.
A normal sane reaction is “yeah, there’s already a working cardiovascular system, better stop it before the organism develops even further.”
This said, it’s an obviously pointless and harmful delay. There is no reason to check a heartbeat of a fetus if a mother decides she doesn’t want to carry it.
It has absolutely no medical function apart from further traumatizing a woman who's already in a really shitty situation.
No one's saying abortion should be possible at 8 months. At 6 weeks when there's a heartbeat it's barely a bag of cells.
> No one's saying abortion should be possible at 8 months.
Sibling poster actually did say that; even moved the line further out.
>> Abortion 1 day before birth? That's clearly already a child and I will object.
> Not your body, not your choice.
> No one's saying abortion should be possible at 8 months.
Yes people do, what? It's legal in like at least 8 US states
> Hang on, how is listening to the heartbeat mental torture?
How about if the state decided that it wouldn't force you to donate your organs to some dying person who needed them, but every time there was a person who needed your your organs and you declined you would have to sit and listen to their heartbeat for 20 minutes. Really sit and think about the person you're deciding to kill. After all, if you don't give your body to someone who needs it, you've killed them.
You'd be cool with that, right?
"Torture" is definitely hyperbolic, but being forced to listen to the heartbeat of the fetus is not something that's based on any kind of science or rational argument, it's quite transparently emotional manipulation.
I agree with you that it's a delicate issue, I really do. I'm also tired of taking infinite psychic damage trying to steel-man the arguments of people who are clearly not interested in operating at the level of steel.
The whole point is to imply you are killing a baby. Like literally. The only reason for that law is that.
There is no medical reason. It does not address rational part of decisiom making either. It is an attempt at forced emotional guilting by medical professional. And to drag you through it.
Just want to point out, it’s polarising because it’s a wedge issues that divides voting blocks neatly, and nothing to do with it being The Issue that it is.
More people die from obesity, cars, flu, preventable illness, etc. But we discuss endless this one issue… it’s for political science reasons not humanity/moral/etc reasons.
It's different from those other cases because it's like getting in a car accident and other people saying you can't get treatment because it's against their religious values, or saying you're not allowed to lose weight because they don't like it.
> That's clearly already a child and I will object.
Clearly you believe in the primacy of preserving life. I am wondering if your belief extends to after the child is born?
> Clearly you believe in the primacy of preserving life. I am wondering if your belief extends to after the child is born?Clearly you believe in the primacy of preserving life. I am wondering if your belief extends to after the child is born?
Are you suggesting that, because I object to abortion a day before delivery, that I must be some kind of misogynistic monster?
Because that's where the line is drawn in this current subthread - 1 day before delivery. If you cannot understand that people consider that a child (i.e. 1 day before delivery) then you have no hope of swaying your audience to your side of the argument at all!
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
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. The explanation sounds very reasonable.
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!"
"Both options are free of charge and free of judgement, especially the latter"
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...
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.
An “obiettore” won’t be your doctor if you want an abortion; there will be somebody else performing it.
That's like 1 out of 1000 doctors, just go to another doctor. And even if that wasn't the case, what is the government supposed to do about that?
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?
Because I'm from Italy and I have women friends and I know that there are a lot of places where you can get a prescription for abortion pills.
We don't need random websites to hand out prescription drugs to kids.
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".
> 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.
The same thing you'd do with a doctor with a penchant for harming their patients. Strip their license.
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.
Which medications were they trying to get? Plan B or something that works later?
I couldn't find a lot of information, but abortion is a right in Italy.
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.
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.
> So in practice access to it is not always that easy.
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.
> 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.
> Indeed, access must be made easy.
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.
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.
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.
That's because they don't want to get sued.
So, you think the government should force doctors to perform abortions, like putting them in jail if they don't want to do it?
how's that different from any other medical procedure?
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.
Jail? No.
Big fine? Of course.
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.
The upside of that ISP-enforced bans can be trivially bypassed by using your own DNS or a public DNS like Quad9.
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.
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.
What’s this fixation of far-right populists on genitals and reproduction? It’s really disturbing
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.
Would not illegality be handled by charging those suspected of the activity and hearing the case in a court of law?
Maybe those blocking the sites are not acting on behalf of law enforcement but rather their own ideas of legality and morality.
Because if you believe this fetus to be a human life then it follows believing that if it is terminated, it is akin to murder/infanticide.
I don't know why people are being so (deliberatively?) reductive ITT.
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.
It's her body and her life.
Whether or not a fetus is human life isn't a scientific concept. Pro-choice people "believe" that it isn't. That's not scientific either.
> Pro-choice people "believe" that it isn't.
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.
> Yes but... you used the word "belief". Nothing scientific there.
And you think the opposing arguments are?
But it’s not. The child has different DNA, and a different life.
• 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...
And in Italy, she has 90 days to do it legally and for free.
And please stop that rape red herring. The overwhelming majority of abortions are carried out as contraceptive methods.
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?
[1]https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
> Even so, you are deliberately dismissing rape victims that got pregnant[1], what is their recourse?
To have the legally available and free abortion that is offered within the first 90 days of their rape?
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.
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.
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.
The whole point of the debate is that the fetus has no choice during an absorption, not some “moral” ground that you are imposing to someone else.
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…
As other commenter said, control over women. But this is not just some desperate attempt, but a way to get back to the roots.
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.
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.
> 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Howe
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.
> 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.
Drafts? They typically only targeted men, with a large possibility of maiming or death as the result.
"After you get back from the war, your reward will be a wife and household."
> Access to reproduction is one of the most basic resources a society has available.
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.
> crotchety old men
Such as Giorgia Meloni?
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 know what is going on in Italy, but that's why we are doing it in America.
Oh, a post about Italy. Let's take this opportunity to talk about America :-D
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.
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".
Reproductive control undermines most right-wing ideologies; outlawing it patches up the cracks.
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 question was why do far right populists care so much about genitals and reproduction, nothing to do with whatever you are saying here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder,_K%C3%BCche,_Kirche
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.
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1: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte...
2: https://www.cfr.org/articles/women-voters-pivotal-role-elect...
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