"In Italy, we have a saying: make the law and you will find a way to cheat it". The Regionalized Implementation of Italian Abortion Policies

While abortion debates often center the moral balance between individual autonomy versus state control, the idea of "state control" itself is nuanced. Regional versus national control of abortion policy has been a matter of much debate in recent years, most famously in the US case. In this paper, we explore how regional policies manifest in Italy. Abortion in Italy is characterized by the high level of conscientious objection among medical professionals, though the level varies significantly by region. Italy delegates administration of its health system to the regional level as well. We argue that this has led to different interpretations of the national abortion law and varying levels of abortion access across the country. We reach these conclusions by bringing together two datasets of interviews with doctors and administrators about abortion policy implementation. We conclude by theorizing a direct causal chain between the delegation of this policy to the regional level and the divergent levels of abortion access across Italy.