Historic San Marino Referendum: Tiny Europe Enclave Votes To Legalise Abortion And Overturn 1865 Law

According to the over 150-year-old law, San Marino women who ended their pregnancies could face 3 years in jail. Term twice as long for those carrying out an abortion

Pro- and anti-abortion campaign posters in San Marino, which voted in a referendum on September 26 on the legalisation of abortion | Photo: AFP

New Delhi: San Marino, Europe’s tiny republic surrounded by Italy, has voted favour of legalising abortion in a historic referendum, overturning an over 150-year-old law in the majority Catholic state.

Official results showed Sunday around 77.30 per cent of voters backed the proposal to allow abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, and also afterwards if it risks the mother's life or there is grave malformation of the foetus, Reuters reported.

The overall voter turnout in the enclave of 33,000 people was, however, low, with only 41 per cent of them exercising their franchise, the report said.

San Marino’s Parliament will now have to draft a bill to legalise the procedure, AP reported.

According to the law dating back to 1865, San Marino women who ended their pregnancies could face three years' jail term, and the term was twice as long for those carrying out an abortion.

Until now, women looking to terminate a pregnancy usually went to Italy, where they could get an abortion done privately at a cost of about 1,500 euros ($1,765), the Reuters report said.

Abortion Still Illegal In 3 European Nations

The referendum in favour of legalising abortion comes at a time when countries like Poland and the US state of Texas have tightened their abortion laws. 

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court of Mexico ruled that penalising abortion is unconstitutional.

Elsewhere in Europe, abortion is still illegal in the micro-states of Andorra and Vatican City and the Mediterranean island of Malta even if the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest, or it posed a threat to the mother’s life.

After Sunday’s ‘Yes’ votes, San Marino now joins other predominantly Catholic states such as Ireland, which abortion became legal only in 2018, and neighboring Italy, which legalised abortion in 1978. 

The Catholic Church of San Marino had strongly opposed the measure.

This opponents’ argument was that San Marino allowed even minors to get free contraception at pharmacies, including the morning-after pill.