Rome (NEV), October 10, 2020 – The Interfaith Observatory on Violence Against Women (OIVD) intervenes on the fetuses cemeteries, with a press release entitled “Idolatrous use of religious symbols and perennial blaming of women”.
“Tens of thousands of fetuses were buried without the knowledge of the women who had them in their wombs – reads the statement -. The fetuses cemetery (in Rome as in other cities) raises a strong legal emphasis on the violation by public institutions of the principle of secularism – proclaimed by the Italian Constitution – and the violation of the equally fundamental principle of privacy. We join those who are opening investigations on these cases”.
The OIVD broadens the discussion also with regard to faiths: “The argument calls into question aspects relating to the imagery and the beliefs of religious cultures”, and also speaks of “fundamentalist tendencies that are always active”, writes OIVD spokeswoman Paola Cavallari. In the press, the Observatory continues, “stories of unspeakable suffering have been read; the pain experienced at the time of the termination of pregnancy was aggravated by intrusive and offensive requests from officials who proposed the burial’. Many women refused the proposal, but it was, without their knowledge (a very serious fact), still carried out. The visible principals of these acts are quite well known: the pro-life associations. The invisible principals are rooted in an atavistic humus, whose fabric has an immemorial and unequivocal name: the blaming of women carried out by patriarchal cultures (religious and otherwise), shown in a special way in matters of reproduction and sexuality, which are related fields. Historical and theological researches testify this.
The crosses of those ‘cemeteries’ are undue and violent – concludes the OIVD – for more than one reason, but here we mention just one: those crosses bear the name of the one who later was not a mother. Designating her in this way, she is nailed to a ‘natural’ destiny that would have been ‘denied’ by that woman; in this way she is publicly accused”.
The Interfaith Observatory on Violence Against Women brings together women of different religious traditions (Protestant Christian – Lutheran, Methodist, Waldensian, Baptist, Adventist, Pentecostal -, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist).
