Pro-choice demos were organised in four Italian cities on Thursday amid claims that women who have abortions in Italy increasingly face a climate similar to that of a ''witch hunt''.
The protests were partly a response to a controversial incident in a Naples hospital earlier this week in which a woman was reportedly questioned by police immediately after she underwent an abortion.
Angered by what they saw as a serious invasion of privacy and an attack on the right to abortion, women staged sit-ins and rallies in Rome, Bologna, Milan and Naples.
The initiatives, which came as the abortion issue appeared to be forcing its way into Italy's election campaign, received political support from most of the centre left.
Health Minister Livia Turco promised to attend the Rome demo and Youth Minister Giovanna Melandri also voiced her solidarity, describing the Naples incident as ''chilling''.
''The demos are a very opportune response to the witch hunt climate that is being created around the question of abortion,'' said Silvana Mura of the Italy of Values party.
Away from politics, outraged reactions to the police intervention in Naples continued to rain down. The Red Cross said the incident was ''shameful'', the association of Catholic doctors said it was ''alarming'' and the CGIL union said it signalled a worrying ''climate'' in the country.
But the Naples prosecutor behind the police action, Giovandomenico Lepore, defended his decision to send in two officers, a man and a woman, to investigate the situation at the Federico II hospital.
''There was no 'raid', as the media claimed. It was a simple case of us having to check up after a crime was reported,'' he said, arguing that the incident had been blown out of proportion.
The 39-year-old woman at the centre of the controversy terminated her pregnancy in the 21st week because doctors diagnosed the fetus as having Klinefelter syndrome, which can lead to severe mental handicaps.
While she was having the abortion on Monday evening, a nurse at the Federico II hospital apparently telephoned the police saying an ''infanticide'' was under way.
When the male and female police officers arrived at the hospital, they quickly established that the telephone call referred to an abortion.
They questioned doctors, seized the relevant medical records and took away the aborted fetus for tests.
The female officer also questioned the woman who had the abortion. The woman has reportedly threatened to take legal action as a result, saying the police presence was an aggressive intrusion into her privacy.
The female police officer was quoted in the press as saying she spoke to the woman some three hours after arriving at the hospital and only asked ''a few'' questions.
Doctors at the hospital have stressed that the abortion did not break the law and the prosecutor is not investigating for any crime connected to it.
But the justice ministry is reportedly mounting an enquiry into the police action and the CSM, the judiciary's self-governing body, is also considering a probe.
Meanwhile, tensions have been fuelled by the remarks of Giuliano Ferrara, a leading journalist who has created his own anti-abortion ticket for the coming elections.
He said that the 21-week abortion carried out at the Federico II hospital amounted to eugenics, or selective breeding. ''A baby was killed because it had an illness. I call that eugenics''.
Ferrara's campaign has provoked alarm on the left, with many seeing it as the sign of an imminent bid by Catholics and conservatives to change or abolish Italy's 1978 abortion law, the much debate 'Legge 194'.
Ferrara has denied wanting to do this but concern grew earlier in the week when Forza Italia leader Silvio Berlusconi, tipped to win April elections, said he supported a call for a UN moratorium on abortions.
In Rome on Wednesday for the women's protests, members of Italian women's association UDI said the law on abortion should not be touched.
''We are here to say that decisions concerning a woman's body must remain in her hands always,'' they said.
