Abortion: Four doctors in Italy receive suspended sentences for manslaughter after denying woman procedure

Four doctors in Italy, all of them “conscientious objectors,” have received suspended prison sentences after a 32 year old woman was denied an abortion when she became ill with sepsis while pregnant with twins.The sentences were announced last week in Catania, Sicily, after a six year legal battle that has highlighted the difficulty that many Italian women have in accessing abortion even in medical emergencies.Valentina Milluzzo died at the Cannizzaro Hospital on 16 October 2016 from septic shock and multi-organ failure. Prosecutors said that seven doctors in the hospital’s obstetrics and gynaecology department were complicit in failing to promptly and adequately diagnose and treat her sepsis and in the “failure to promptly remove the source of the infection: fetuses and placentas.”During the trial it was not disputed that the doctors were conscientious objectors. Three of the medics were acquitted. But four—Silvana Campione, Giuseppe Maria Alberto Calvo, Alessandra Coffaro, and Vincenzo…
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