ABSTRACT: Within a few days the referendum will sweep away the norms of the Rocco-Reale code on abortion. It is a victory of the Radical Party and the Women's Liberation Movement helped only by the PSI [Socialist Party] and the PSDI [Social Democrats]. But the proposed bill is still very poor: confused, plethoric, incomplete, repugnant to all who are not disposed to render unto Caesar that which belongs to conscience and, for believers, to God. The Catholic leaders, the Christian Democrats in Parliament along with the Socialists and the laity discuss the Radical proposal: cancel demographic and state-regulated abortion, establish recognition of the natural faculty of women to interrupt their pregnancy or not, even with the support of basic social structures such as constituent family consultants.

("STAMPA SERA", March 7, 1976)

The laws on abortion of our Rocco-Reale code have by now, counting from today, at most one hundred four days of life left. By June 13, in fact, the referendum will be held which will sweep them away with majority so massive that the democratic, national and popular unity will be made evident as never before in these thirty years of the republic.

The Radical Party and the Women's Liberation Movement, aided in Parliament only by the PSI [Socialist Party] (and let us not forget it - since January also by the PSDI [Social Democratic Party]) can thus now mark up proudly another result in their fight for social and civil liberation in our country.

At this point we can declare our satisfaction and leave to others, if they are up to it, the job of designing a law capable of overcoming our referendum and opposing the simple depenalising of voluntary abortion with a more severe law, certainly, but also a more responsible and precise one.

Instead we have, by ourselves again - and more than ever censored by the RAI-TV and almost all of the press - warded off the worst of the errors that the parties in Parliament, except for the Socialists, were committing.

In less than nine months we have effected at least five changes in judgement and position by the PCI (usually prudent and also able), each of them in a direction we had hoped for. We have already provoked substantial changes in the bill which everyone was then straining to call good and which had been drawn up by the "limited committee" of the Chamber of Deputies.

But the present bill, one must admit, is so far not poor but dreadful. It is confused beyond all measure in its form, plethoric, wrong-headed, equivocal and at the same time leaves out much. It remains government regulated in a way that is repugnant to anyone - Catholic or not - who is not disposed to give to Caesar that which belongs to conscience, and for the believer, to God.

In our numerous official encounters - Adele Faccio, Loris Fortuna and myself - on behalf of the National Referendum Committee, it is not by chance that we have received a serious and attentive hearing from all.

We are now working intensively, with almost daily meetings and contacts, on a bill which will contain the maximum of Christian concerns (even if rarely openly expressed) that worry the official Catholic world, confessional and political, for legislative and theoretical norms that are adequate and precise.

For two months Catholic leaders, not "dissenting" ones, and Christian Democratic members of Parliament, along with our lay and Socialist comrades, have been discussing our proposal to cancel every trace of demographic and state-controlled abortion from the laws and to establish instead the juridical recognition of women's natural faculty to interrupt pregnancies or not, even with the support of basic, non traditional, social structures such as the constituent family consultants.

We have at various times proposed a "re-writing" of the law, including considerations presented by the formal opposition that has crystallised in certain Catholic areas towards the present formulations, also for the sake of taking into account humanly understandable questions of prestige and respect which might weigh against the opening of a loyal, honest and creative dialogue.

Now that the usual "nay-saying Catholics", as in the case of divorce, are again beginning to present their ideas on the matter to us, we consider ourselves justified in making public these aspects of our activity too, for the sake of aiding a truth and a civil victory which to a certain degree have by now been assured for all.

We hope that we are being understood everywhere - even across the Tiber (i.e., the Vatican City, ed.) - where not everyone is apparently ready to lynch us just because we have taken on the task, taken it on alone for years, of the scourge of mass and clandestine abortion and have brought the religious, political and social forces to the point of trying to overcome it.