ABSTRACT: Open letter from Marco Pannella to the Procurator General Calamari following the arrest of Gianfranco Spadaccia, Secretary of the Radical Party, which came immediately after the arrest of Dr.Conciani and the warrant of arrest against Adele Faccio and Emma Bonino. Faccio, Conciani and Emma Bonino are officials of the CISA (Information Centre for Sterilization and Abortion) who, in sign of civil disobedience against a law which forces women to resort to clandestine abortion, publicly organize abortions with the Karmann method from the headquarters of the Radical party. Spadaccia, who has taken responsibility for the fact, is arrested.

(Il Mondo - January 1975 from "Marco Pannella - Works and Speeches - 1959-1980", Gammalibri, January 1982)

Mr Procurator Generator Calamari, you have arrested the national Secretary of the Radical Party, Spadaccia, to safeguard the soundness of the race. At dawn: it wasn't the milkman, it was you. From the heights of your city, where Ernesto Rossi (1) rests beside the Rosselli brothers (2), a voice will surely descend this night to bring your prey, closed in the prison of Murate, the thanking which the fathers owe to their sons who are capable of struggling, living and being good as them. In those same hours, as has been happening for twenty years, masses of rendered fetuses will silently descend into the Arno, into the sewage, together with the abundant blood of the scraped wombs - the tears of the women who have not been incapable of wanting to become mothers.

In hundreds of homes there will be despair and fear. Not fear of you, Mr Procurator General, who have never come down from your statue for so little. Nor of the law, which has thus created new crimes and new criminals. Clandestine abortion, the horrible, barbaric, terrifying, mass, class-discriminating and clerical abortion, leaves you indifferent; you refuse to deal with such plagues. No, it is fear of other complications, of infirmity, of more blood, of sterility, of not being capable of loving any more; and, more, simply, fear of death. Fear, also, of not paying the debts one has been forced to contract. And fear of a remote hell, which is the only certain and current one in the souls that are haunted by it.

From his throne, a cardinal directs his anathemas and his insults against us. Literally infamous, he accuses us of murder. Those who have always blessed and supported violence and massacres dare speak in the name of life. What Florit doesn't say is that the alternative to the therapeutical abortion guarantied by us is only the tragical and hellish clandestine abortion, or the class-discriminating and clerical abortion of the luxury clinics, of these Sacred Rotas of abortion.

In your city, Mr Calamari, the major of the Carabinieri who carried out the "operation" in defence of the race as a judicial police officer, states to the press that in town a procured abortion generally costs 500.000. He might have added that abortions are otherwise performed in dangerous and pathogenic hygienic and psychological conditions, that the number of clandestine abortions is currently in the thousands or dozens of thousands, and that they regard hundreds of thousands of people over a period of one or two years. Never heard of it, Mr Procurator General? Never suspected it, Mr Assistant Prosecutor Casini?

I know; you are extremely busy, operating against the Marxist and Radical subversion, against the publishers, against the vendors, the readers of pamphlets on sexual education, against those magistrates who damage the prestige of their class because they profess republican and democratic opinions; against the strike of the traffic police, against our public defamations, against the "subversive plans": the "red" ones, of course, the only ones you know.

Nonetheless you found the time, when in Florence women were finally given the possibility of aborting like human beings and not like filthy beasts to be punished and massacred, when they were allowed, at least in this, be "different" from the large majority of other women. They aborted with L. 100.000, if they had them, or for free. In human, civil, medical conditions which are extraordinary for a country full of decaying holy hospitals and pious institutions. They aborted in the conditions, after a few minutes (thanks to modern science, thanks to those who obey to the essence of the oath of Hippocrates, thanks to the humanity which succeeds in progressing and defeating the followers of Ptolemy, thanks to the militant activity and the civil and personal morality of exponents of the Radical Party, of the MLD (3), of the CISA), of going back to their homes, to their work, continuing that dialogue with their conscience which is always present when life is based on the freedom and responsibility of each and all,

without psychological and physical traumas, without risks for the future, without pathogenic consequences.

After having captured the enemies of the country and of the law, physicians and nurses, technical and subordinate personnel, after having captured Spadaccia, now you are looking all around Italy for Adele Faccio, this admirable militant who makes no exaggerated and sterile proclamations of ideological feminism, but consciously jeopardizes her freedom and her responsibility until the moment in which a necessary and urgent step will be made for an true and concrete liberation. This woman has been capable, practically alone, with her companions of ideas and beliefs, of foreshadowing that which every civilized State guaranties to everyone and which, sooner or later, will be not only a right, but a duty of the republican institutions, of your State, Mr Calamari. In the meanwhile you send me a "warning".

Fine. Not only I concede, but I state, publicly and serenely, that you, together with your collaborators, are the ones to be blamed for the events of these days. We need to impeach the republican Parliament, which has, to date, opposed all our campaigns, all our requests and advice, with the filthy law you are applying. The ones to be blamed are the political institutions, the democratic ones first of all.

You, instead, are in your place. You apply the laws that punish crimes of opinion, laws which Parliament defends, the ones we suggest to wipe away with a series of popular referendums and which the country has been bound to for thirty years, in contrast with the Constitution and with the fundamental law of the Republic.

For too long I have been acting to make the historical Left which I belong to understand that the heritage of the "historical Right", not the heritage of Crispi (4), his idea of the legal State is, today more than ever, objectively revolutionary and subversive of the established disorder. Arrest, therefore, capture, convict, strike, condemn, mobilize the armed arm and listen to the Catholic soul of this State, as you love to do and as the republican Parliament enables you to do! For my part, I refuse, like Spadaccia would refuse, to be worthy, in you eyes, of the same privileges of impunity which you recognize to many, in the former Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Above all to those bishops, perjurers and rogues, bullies and hard liners, which twice, in 1970 and this Spring, insulted and violated, in a patent, continued and arrogant way, the laws and the regulations as well as their and your clerical-fascist Concordat.

My sorrow is for other things, Mr Procurator General; I am sorry that the justice system of this country serves the regime, the authority, the "order" (that is, the established disorder) far more than it serves the law. I am sorry about the fact that for years and years, in Florence and elsewhere, you failed to take those initiatives, you failed to promote those investigations, you failed to carry out a penal action which it was right to take faced to the univocal and undeniable gravity of the social plague of mass and class-discriminating clandestine abortion.

In Milan a few days ago, a journalist from "Amica" - alone - found 37 physicians (on 50 she visited) who performed clandestine abortions. 47% of the middle class, therefore, has nothing better to do but to authorize and facilitate crimes and offences against the individual and the race.

Why, Mr Procurator General, with all your colleagues of Italy, have you proven to ignore facts which the entire press, all the police that intervened in the thousands in our meetings, conventions and demonstrations, made public?

Why, in the face of the hundreds of self-denunciations for procured abortion, published on my newspaper, which I was editor and publisher of, Liberazione, republished by the other newspapers, did you not exert the penal action, and why did no one else? Why were we not charged with criminal association, instigation to commit crimes, apology of a crime, contribution in procuring abortions, offence against the laws of the State, public defamation? Why was this not done when we announced denunciations for neglect of official duty or for non-exertion of the penal action?

The regime had hoped to assassinate the Radical Party, the LID (5), the MLD, the CISA, the LOC (6) and the entire civil rights movement in another way, which it judged less costly and unpopular, that is, abrogating them as subjects of the constitutional and fundamental rights of man and of the citizens. Last Spring, it tried to abrogate the divorce activists more than divorce; it tried to assassinate that which is, as a whole, the most dangerous alternative movement, because it bases its libertarian hopes, its democratic class commitment on the defence of a truly constitutional Republic, on liberal claims, on the freedom and on the force of absolute nonviolence. We have had the strength and the fortune to overthrow the situation.

All together, we represent the 13 May party; and you know it. You want to make us pay for that before we cause further damage. You consider it intolerable and urgent to clear the field and the future of our methods and ideals. The value at stake is the credibility of the regime. Therefore you capture our persons. At this point you know that we express not small minorities but great majorities, which the authority has made silent with violence, with corruption, with the betrayal of the fundamental law of the State.

Those who have waited these days to strike at us with the legal violence of the institutions, have degraded justice to slave of the regime, not by pursuing the violations of the law, but not doing so for years, against their regulations and especially against their essence. The point on which we disagree, Mr Calamari, is on the methods you are using. If you allow me to say so, it is excessive to handcuff and keep into prison our arrested companions. Now you are really moving, Messrs Calamari and Casini.

So let us do away with mutual alibis. At this moment, hundreds of radicals belonging to the Radical party, the CISA, the MLD, hundreds of libertarian, lay, socialist militants and feminist companions, are carrying out a wide series of offences, the flagrancy of which is - allow me to say so - flagrant. And not only the hundreds of signatories of the public self-denunciations for abortion. But, unorganized as I am today, in charge only of the promotion of the "May 13 League" - Socialist Movement for liberties and civil rights" - I cannot but speak in my name and on behalf of myself only.

My situation, Mr Procurator General, is the following:

1) I have long been manifestly and uninterruptedly associated to Gianfranco Spadaccia, Adele Faccio, the Radical Party, the MLD, the CISA, and - today more than ever - support objective positions of maximum responsibility in promoting civil disobedience against an unjust law that wants to force millions of women to resort to clandestine abortion. Nothing of what they have done or tried to do I have not done with them and regardless of them. I have always proclaimed the duty for all persons to contribute to procure abortions, out of need and conscience, decided by women who are sovereign in deciding of the use of their body, free and responsible toward maternity. I do so once again now and will do so tomorrow and on each occasion and at all moments, especially affirming the duty of each person and each physician who agrees ideally and politically with our position. I believe this letter I am sending you, Mr Procurator General, is the evidence of the flagrancy and of the continuation of the instigation to com

mit crimes, of apology of a crime and of criminal association.

2) I intend to operate and am operating so that, in the coming days, in several centres of Italy, the over three hundred women who turned to us since the centre of Florence was closed, and who are experiencing terrible moments, days, and minutes, may obtain that assistance which an aberrant law and the State deny them, and which they have a right to. I have used these days of freedom to pursue this objective.

3) Until our Parliament, the government, the "justice system" find - as they should - a new, decent, non shameful answer with articles, meetings, documents and any other appropriate initiative, I believe it my duty to disobey the law, object in conscience, promote and organize a democratic and civil use of science and medicine, of politics, and of the institutions, in association with the Radical Party, the MLD, the CISA (and only with these); a use which may save, together with the greatest possible number of people, the maximum of hope for progress, justice and freedom. There is little more to add, only that there should be no alibis not to apply the law in the same way for all. It concerns the only other offence which perhaps cannot be clearly inferred from these lines; that of contribution in procured abortion. Contribution with the above mentioned persons and with the physician Conciani, whom I publicly address a formal thanking. I therefore inform you that for three months I have been directing all the

women who turn to us to voluntarily interrupt a pregnancy to the clinic of Florence. They are about twenty people. That is all, Mr Calamari.

Now I await you news, we both know that. I do not consider you a coward, until the contrary is proved. The Republic has made you into one of the most prestigious magistrates; of us, of the delinquents, as of millions and millions of poor and simple women and men. You represent the republican law of the powerful; we represent the socialist and libertarian, lay and nonviolent hope of those who experience day by day that this justice is violent.

From the pages of this newspaper, which was of Piero Calamandrei (7), as well as of Mario Pannunzio (8) and Ernesto Rossi, for this ideal company and the live company of new companions, I must reassure you, Mr Procurator General, that we are not the ones who should be ashamed.

By entering them, the day comes closer when we will once again tear down your prisons.

Translator's notes

(1) Ernesto Rossi (1897-1967): Italian journalist and politician.

Leader of Giustizia e Libertà (1929), he was arrested in 1930 for his antifascist activity. After the was he promoted the European Federalist Movement and was one of the founders of the Radical Party. His best known work is "I padroni del vapore" (1955).

(2) Carlo Rosselli (1899-1937): Italian politician. Together with Nenni he was the organizer of the magazine "Quarto Stato" (1926), and was exiled by the fascists to the island of Lipari (1927-28). Among the founders of the movement Giustizia e Libertà (Paris, 1929), he fought in Spain with the republicans (1936). He was assassinated together with his brother Nello (1900-1937) by terrorists of the cagoule on the order of the Italian secret services. An outstanding character of the Italian exiled antifascism, he achieved a synthesis of liberal values and socialist doctrine, illustrated in his work "Socialismo liberale" (1928)

(3) MLD: Women's liberation movement.

(4) Francesco Crispi (1818-1901): Italian politician. A follower of Mazzini, he took part in the Sicilian revolution of 1848, and from 1860 on he became the political mastermind of Garibaldi's "dictatorship" in Southern Italy. Representative of the Left as of 1861, in 1864 he joined the monarchy and was Minister of the Interior with Depretis (1877-78). Prime Minister (1887-91; 1893-96), he soon manifested authoritarian and nationalist tendencies; he repressed irredentism and the socialist movement (dissolution of the Fasci in Sicily and of the Socialist Party in 1894) and advocated the Triple Alliance and the colonial expansion in Ethiopia. He resigned after the defeat of Adua (1896).

(5) LID: Italian League for Divorce.

(6) LOC: Italian League of Conscientious Objectors.

(7) Piero Calamandrei (1889-1956): Italian jurist and politician, author of several juridical essays and founder of the magazine "Il Ponte".

(8) Mario Pannunzio (1910-1968): Editor of the newspaper "Risorgimento Liberale" (1943-47) and of the weekly "Il Mondo" (1949-66).