The Left wants to change Italy's abortion law, not the government which has come under fire, also from Spain, for alleged plans to let pro-life advocates into abortion clinics, Premier Giorgia Meloni said Thursday.
Meloni again described these reports as "fake news".
"Those who want to change Law 194 is the Left, not us. We only want to guarantee free choices".
Meloni has hit back hard after a Spanish minister criticized analleged Italian government measure that would allow 'pro-maternity' associations access to abortion clinics.
"When you are ignorant on a subject you must at least have the good sense not to give lessons," Meloni said in response to comments by Spanish Equality Minister Ana Recondo.
Recondo had said that: "allowing organized pressure against women who want to interrupt a pregnancy means undermining a right recognized by the law.
"It is the strategy of the far right: to threaten to striprights, to reinstate parity between women and men," she said
on
groups as well as liberal political parties.
Abortion has been legal in Italy since 1978 but it is hard to get into practice with around half the country's doctors conscious objectors on moral or religious grounds, rising to almost 90% in some
regions to make abortion easier to access.