“IO NON DOVEVO AVERE NESSUN RIMORSO”. IL PROCURATO ABORTO TRA REATO E CURA (1889-1943)

Perception of guilt and remorse is tied to the complicated question of
what is an abortion. There is no doubt that abortion practices have had a
long and complex history. Abortion is, in fact, a ‘mobile’ category, whose
definition and identification depends on several factors and is related
to the context and - not least - the complex question of identifying the
actual voluntariness of the act. The frequency of spontaneous abortions,
due to excessive force or working conditions, and the inevitability of the
appeal to the interruption of pregnancy in the absence of other means of
fertility control methods, allowed a widespread lack of guilt, testified also
by language even in the mid-twenties, when the fascist regime begins to
structure a policy that culminates, during the thirties, in unprecedented
emphasis on the role and the female body in an exclusively procreative
function and configuration of maternity as a patriotic duty particularly
enshrined in the new Penal code of 1930.