Women discover their names exposed in 'fetus cemetery'. “I cried all the tears I had in my body”
A wing of the Flaminio Cemetery, the largest in Italy, is full of white crosses coming out of the ground. Most carry a small black rectangle, each with a date and a woman's name.. It is about identification of women who had abortions in Italy, in the tombs where fetuses were buried – many of them without the consent of the women themselves.
In Italy, burying aborted fetuses is not technically illegal, but women have a right to privacy under the 1978 law legalizing abortion in the country.
In an interview with Lily, publication of Washington Post, Francesca, a 36-year-old teacher, said she almost fainted when she saw her own name and the date December 23, 2019 among the graves. “The pain I felt at that moment awakened a year-long trauma. And suddenly I cried all the tears I had in my body,” she said.
“The pain I felt at that moment awakened a year-long trauma. And suddenly I cried all the tears I had in my body.”
Francesca
According to the report, Francesca's case is just one of thousands in Italy's “fields of angels”, corners of cemeteries dedicated to the burial of fetuses resulting from abortion, managed by Catholic anti-abortion groups.
Francesca was moved by curiosity to go to the cemetery after reading a post on Facebook in which a colleague said she refused to claim her aborted fetal tissue from a hospital in Roma.
Seven months later, she discovered that the remains were taken by strangers and buried without her consent. The post went viral, with more than 10 thousand shares. Other women said the same thing happened to them. The backlash became something like the new Italian #MeToo movement.
Elisa Ercoli, president of the feminist organization Differenza Donna, a feminist organization based in Roma, says that she started receiving dozens of calls from women reporting similar episodes.
"We were aware of the existence of fetal cemeteries, but nothing like what we witnessed in Flaminio, where full names are publicly exposed and women's privacy violated”, He stated.
In early October, she said her organization heard from 130 women who demanded that prosecutors open an investigation into who was behind the public burials. The group filed a legal complaint, citing breaches of sensitive personal data.
“It was an attack on all of us, an episode of institutional violence that made us realize how many obstacles we still try to overcome on a daily basis, despite the legalization of abortion in Italy in 1978,” said Ercoli.
The result of the investigation should be released in November.
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