On Wednesday, the municipality of Rome, Italy decided to censor pro-life posters denouncing abortion as the primary cause of femicide. Sex-selective abortion remains tragically common across the world, but feminists complained about the scourge of sex-selective abortion being compared to the killing of women in other contexts.
“They said it’s illegal to campaign against abortion. In our opinion, it’s a clear case of ideological censorship,” Filippo Savarese, campaign director at CitizenGO Italia, told PJ Media.
His pro-life organization erected the posters throughout Rome in preparation for Italy’s March for Life this coming Saturday, which marks the 40th anniversary of Law 194, which made abortion legal within the first twelve weeks of pregnancy and in cases of fetal abnormalities or threats to the life of the mother.
“Abortion is the prime cause of femicide in the world,” the black-and-white posters declared.
A feminist group quickly condemned the pro-life posters as “disgraceful,” the BBC reported. Local union leader Francesca Del Bello called the posters “offensive to every woman, especially for those who had the difficult experience of abortion or violence.”
Writer and broadcaster Selvaggia Lucarelli also attacked the posters, tweeting, “How sad to use the term ‘femicide’ in a vile way with the clear aim of attracting attention to a campaign against abortion.”
Che tristezza usare in maniera vile e strumentale il termine “femminicidio” per attirare l’attenzione su una campagna contro l’aborto. pic.twitter.com/F78brSbDHp
— Selvaggia Lucarelli (@stanzaselvaggia) May 14, 2018
The feminist group Facebook Rebel Network called on Rome’s Mayor Virginia Raggi to remove the pro-life posters immediately.
Others also attacked the billboards as “offensive and gross,” arguing that the posters were better fitted to the year 1018 rather than 2018.
A #ProLife group has put up an offensive and gross billboard which states: "#abortion is the first cause of #femicide"
Italy, Rome, 1018…. shit, no… it's 2018!— Elisa Padovan (@ysa_halloween) May 14, 2018
According to CitizenGO, the municipality of Rome caved to these demands and had the posters removed. “The municipality of Rome censors the poster #stopaborto of CitizenGO,” the organization announced on Twitter.
The municipality of Rome censors the poster #stopaborto of @CitizenGOit: https://t.co/yDDVaMdMyr
— CitizenGO (@CitizenGO) May 16, 2018
“The Municipality of Rome (in the person of the Mayor Virginia Raggi) was solicited to remove our posters by feminist groups and leftist national politicians,” CitizenGO’s Filippo Savarese told PJ Media. Raggi’s administration “ordered the company which manages the installations we rent to remove the images because these would violate the Regulation on publicity in public space which condemns ‘messages against personal freedom and civil rights.'”
Savarese attacked this regulation as far too broad, and easy to manipulate to quash any political dissent.
Even though Rome suppressed the CitizenGO posters, the message on them is likely true.
“In Eastern Europe and Asia, millions of abortions are practiced only to kill female fetuses,” Savarese noted. “If those Human Beings are killed only because they are women, why we can’t talk of ‘feminicide?'”
According to the United Nations Population Fund, there are 117 million missing women in Asia and Eastern Europe, due to a preference for male children.
According to the independent statistics website Worldometers, there have been more than 15.6 million abortions so far this year. Even assuming those abortions have been split evenly between males and females (which is unlikely, since many cultures have a preference for male children), that would mean more than 7.8 million abortions of women so far this year.
According to Worldometers, the leading cause of non-abortion death so far in 2018 is communicable disease, at 4.8 million for men and women. Approximately 3 million people have died of cancer, 1.9 million have died from smoking, just under 1 million have died from alcoholism, more than 600,000 from HIV/AIDS, about 500,000 from automobile accidents, and just under 400,000 from suicide. These numbers cover both men and women, so if women represent approximately half of those deaths, no cause comes close to abortion.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 4.2 million women died of heart disease in 2015, while 3.2 million died of strokes that year, and 1.6 million died of lower respiratory infections. Heart disease claimed about 1.4 million women’s lives.
If an unborn baby is considered human, and therefore a female fetus is considered a woman, then abortion is the number one cause of death among women.
The only reason pro-abortion feminists consider this statistic offensive is because they stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the humanity of an unborn baby.
“The right of feminists begin in the maternal womb,” CitizenGo tweeted.
I diritti delle femministe iniziano nell’utero materno. #stopaborto
— CitizenGO Italia (@CitizenGOit) May 16, 2018
The organization argued that after 40 years, legal abortion had failed women. Abortion is often used to suppress women, leaving “millions of babies killed and women injured.”
ABORTO È LA PRIMA CAUSA DI FEMMINICIDIO NEL MONDO. Dopo 40 anni la #legge194 ha fallito. Prima violenza contro donne è #aborto: spesso usato per sopprimere #donne in modo mirato, lascia tragici traumi, milioni di bimbi uccisi e donne ferite. #StopAborto pic.twitter.com/eUg7acBOch
— CitizenGO Italia (@CitizenGOit) May 14, 2018
A recent study showed that women suffer physically and spiritually from abortion. Worse, nearly 75 percent of the women surveyed said their decision to abort was subject to pressure from others — parents, boyfriends, or husbands. More than 58 percent said they aborted their baby to make others happy, and almost 30 percent said they made the decision from fear of losing their partner if they did not.
Indeed, women at the American March for Life in Washington, D.C., declared that giving birth is far more “empowering” for women than abortion could ever be. Rather than being offensive for feminists, the message that abortion is the primary cause of femicide enables women to face the tragic global threat against females in the womb.
Rome’s cowardly act of censoring CitizenGO is the true offense and tragedy of the situation. Millions of unborn women die every year, and millions of mothers undergo abortion — which can be very dangerous and have lasting consequences for their health — for reasons that are far from “empowering.” True feminists should hear this message and act to defend life, inside and outside the womb.
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