VERONA — In a City Hall office decorated with ultrasound images of his children, a Crucifix and nesting dolls of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mayor Federico Sboarina explained why he had sought to make Verona the first “Pro-Life City” in Italy.
“This is the city of love, the city of Romeo and Juliet,” he said, “and the fruit of love is life.”
Under his leadership, Verona passed an ordinance last year requiring women seeking an abortion, legalized in Italy in 1978, to first consult with anti-abortion groups offering financial assistance.
The measure, which puts additional obstacles in front of women in a country where abortion can already be difficult to obtain, established Verona as Italy’s conservative center, a reputation that will receive further burnishing starting Friday, when this city in Italy’s north plays host to the annual World Congress of Families.
The gathering is an international who’s who of anti-abortion and anti-gay hard-liners and has links to allies of Mr. Putin, who has emerged as a global icon for promoters of societies based on what they call “identity” and “tradition.”
Verona’s anti-abortion campaign fits nicely with the broader aims of Italy’s new hard right, which is led by the interior minister, Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League Party, who is the conference’s headliner.
Mr. Salvini has supplemented his anti-immigrant, law-and-order appeal by joining with traditionalist leaders in the Roman Catholic church to crusade for conservative social values.
“The body of women has become a political battlefield,” said Giulia Siviero, a feminist activist who is planning to demonstrate against the World Congress of Families. “Slowly but surely, brick by brick, they are weakening the law.”
Last year, she and others protested the anti-abortion ordinance in Verona by donning the red cloaks of a “Handmaid’s Tale” and crowding onto a gallery overlooking the City Hall chamber, where one city counselor greeted them with a fascist salute.
Mr. Salvini and his allies contend that an erosion of the traditional family by liberal values has contributed to Italy’s troublingly low birthrate and loss of identity. Basically, they argue, that if Italians don’t have babies, they risk replacement by migrants — and Muslims — from Africa.
“I can’t repopulate Calabria, Sardinia or Trentino with migrants paid with the money of Italians,” Mr. Salvini wrote on Twitter in November, referring to areas of Italy where the population is declining. He added that his plan was to repopulate the country with Italians, “not taking pieces of Africa and bringing them to Italy.”
Women’s rights activists and others are concerned that Verona, once a stronghold of Mussolini, is slipping back into a flirtation with Fascism.
They say Mr. Salvini is exploiting the abortion issue to promote an Italians First agenda, which includes an argument that abortion needs to be limited to increase the number of native Italians.
Members within Mr. Salvini’s own governing coalition have raised objections about the families congress, which takes place from March 29-31. It was called a summit for “right-wing losers” by Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio, a leader of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement.
On Tuesday, Mr. Salvini responded to concerns about the gathering’s agenda by asserting that the legality of abortion and divorce in Italy were not up for discussion.
But activists are skeptical, especially when they talk about Italy’s families minister, Lorenzo Fontana — an arch-conservative, a Verona native and a member of Mr. Salvini’s League party — who is a driving force behind the gathering.
Mr. Fontana marched at Verona’s 2015 anti-gay marriage demonstration behind a banner reading Verona Family Pride, along with Mr. Sboarina, the mayor, as well as local leaders of fascist, soccer hooligan and extremist groups. Mr. Salvini was part of his wedding party.
The families minister has also said gay marriage, gender studies and mass migration are weakening traditional families and risk “the cancellation of our people.”
Reversing Italy’s plunging birthrate has been made a priority of his ministry, and Mr. Fontana has chastised officials in Brussels for arguing that “an aging Europe needs migrants.”
“For us,” he said, “an aging Europe needs a new generation of children.”
An avid fan of Mr. Putin, he has also expressed hope for the return of a Christian Europe and called the fight against abortion “the final battle,” because “our populations are under attack.”
Some former allies of Mr. Salvini and Mr. Fontana say that the two are purposefully echoing a sinister era in Italian history.
“It recalls the fascist period when the argument about the birthrate was a main point,” said Flavio Tosi, the former mayor of Verona who himself came to power in 2007 with racially charged language and the support of far-right extremists.
Mr. Tosi, a former patron of Mr. Fontana and Mr. Sboarina, lost a power struggle to lead the League to Mr. Salvini and was subsequently kicked out of the party.
He added that his administration refused to bring the anti-abortion ordinance up for a vote because “it was insane,” and would have drawn national outrage. But now, he said, “the atmosphere has changed.”
The measure was introduced by Alberto Zegler, a member of Verona’s City Council and the League party. Mr. Zegler, who wears a lapel pin in the shape of a baby’s foot, is also pushing to require the burial of aborted fetuses.
He argued that the new ordinance was in no way a rollback of abortion rights but instead gave economic help to women in difficulty, whether single, “or maybe raped” or perhaps “having become a prostitute.”
Plus, the demographic trends made abortion a danger to the nation’s future, he said.
“If we don’t reverse the trend, in 50 years there will maybe be a huge reduction in the number of Italians,” he said.
Similar demographic concerns, especially in Russia, led to the founding of the World Congress of Families in the 1990s. Now led by Brian Brown, who is also the president of the National Organization for Marriage, the organization’s funders have included Russian oligarchs, like Konstantin Malofeev, who is under American sanctions for his support of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Mr. Malofeev figures prominently in Italian media allegations, so far unproven, that Mr. Salvini secretly received Russian funding to finance his campaigns. He is also close to the Russian representative of the World Congress of Families, Alexey Komov.
Mr. Komov, in turn, is close to the Italian anti-abortion group Pro-Vita, a sponsor of the Verona conference, and which has links to Italy’s post-Fascist Forza Nuova party.
The city councilor who gave the fascist salute to the feminist protesters is close to an extreme-right splinter group of Forza Nuova. Asked about the councilor, Mr. Sboarina, Verona’s mayor, said, “Let’s say he has that political area as his reference point” and added with a shrug, “I know a lot of people on the extreme right.”
Around Verona, several people saw the anti-abortion ordinance and this week’s conference as an expression of the ascendance of right-wing politics.
“If we really want to reduce the number of abortions, we should not be passing these ridiculous laws,” said Maria Geneth, 64, a gynecologist, as she attended Mass at the medieval Basilica of San Lorenzo in Verona. “We should be educating women about contraceptive measures and helping them improve their economic situation.”
Source : Nytimes
