New Paper: Reproductive Health of Migrant Women in Italy and Europe
by LIA LOMBARDI
The about 17 million migrant women in the EU countries have significantly higher fertility and abortion rates than their native counterparts, but access to reproductive health services is not always available to them. Notwithstanding the EU provision, which recommends that member states legislate in favour of reproductive health and make it accessible, the legislation on mi-gration and health policies very often discriminates against migrant women. The elective abor-tion of migrant women has fuelled a heated debate in several European countries: the most controversial issues concern the high abortion rates (for example in Norway, Spain and Italy); the access to abortion for foreign non-residents or undocumented women (as in the Czech Republic and France) and sex-selective abortion (in Sweden and Netherlands). Starting from these issues the paper analyses three aspects of induced abortion: a) abortion rates among mi-grant women and their related social conditions; b) health and social policies for migrant women; c) access to safe and legal abortion in the EU.