CATANIA, Italy - Monia, a Sicilian woman in her early forties, was overjoyed when she discovered in October 2022 she was expecting her first child. Her doctor, however, recommended a genetic test due to her age, and the result was one no parent wants to receive.

The foetus had a genetic syndrome. Monia, who declined to give her surname, asked her gynaecologist what she could do.

"Nothing. You don't want to terminate, do you?" the doctor asked her, she said. 

He was a conscientious objector, Monia said, one of hundreds on the southern Italian island. More than 80% of gynaecologists in Sicily refuse to perform abortions for moral or religious reasons, according to the latest health ministry data, which dates to 2022, even though the procedure has been a legal right for women in Italy since 1978.

To address that situation, in late May Sicily's regional council - run by a centre-right coalition - passed a law in a secret ballot requiring all public hospitals to create dedicated abortion wards and to hire staff willing to provide the service.

Under the national rules, abortion is permitted within the first 90 days of a pregnancy, or later if there are risks to the mother's health or foetal abnormalities. The latter circumstance applied to Monia, who went to the Sant'Antonio Abate hospital in the city of Trapani, in western Sicily, to terminate her pregnancy.

"All the gynaecologists were objectors," she said. "An obstetrician gave me a bed with only a mattress cover and said they would administer a pill every three hours until I went into labour." She was told she would receive no further assistance.

Her story is far from unique in southern Italy, where cultural traditions are more conservative than in the Catholic country's richer north and centre.

At first, Monia's pills were ineffective, but after five days and a change of treatment she finally miscarried, attended to by a doctor and a midwife. 

Hospital staff referred to her as "Article 6," she said, after the provision in the law that...