By Angelo Amante and Alvise Armellini
ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s privacy watchdog said on Thursday it had fined Rome’s city council and its cemeteries agency more than 400,000 euros ($439,440) over the now-abandoned practice of putting the mother’s name on the graves of aborted fetuses.
The issue emerged in 2020, when a group of women who had terminated their pregnancies found plaques bearing their names on a burial site at Rome’s Flaminio-Prima Porta cemetery.
Some of them filed judicial complaints, claiming that the practice was a violation of their right to privacy, and triggered investigations into the facts.
The privacy watchdog ordered local health authorities to stop giving personal details of the women on burial documents and medical certificates for aborted fetuses, calling it an “unlawful disclosure”.
Abortion has been legal in Italy since 1978, but it remains highly controversial. In many public hospitals the procedure is effectively impossible due to the high number of objectors who refuse to carry it out.
Rome’s local administration was not immediately available for comment on the fine, but in November the city changed its burial rules to ensure that the graves of aborted fetuses would be marked with anonymous codes, not the mothers’ names.
Differenza Donna, a women’s rights group which had sued the city of Rome over the aborted fetus cemetery, hailed the fine as “a great victory” against what it called the “violent” practice of exposing the names of those who interrupt their pregnancies.
“No logic or legal reason can be found for putting on graves a label bearing the name and surname of a woman who is still alive,” said Ilaria Boiano, a lawyer for the group, said in a statement.
($1 = 0.9102 euros)
(Reporting by Angelo Amante and Alvise Armellini; Editing by Gareth Jones)
