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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 January 2016
This article explores the reasons for the failure of the Fascist attempts to raise the Italian birth rate through an examination of the pro-natalist campaign in the great industrial and commercial city of Milan and its surrounding province. It then considers one of the specific ways in which the birth rate was kept down - illegal abortion - focusing in particular on the dramatic events surrounding the arrest of an illegal abortionist in the small textile town of Rho in 1928.
1 Although population experts had been aware of the decline in the birth rate, and discussed its extent and causes since the Liberal period, it was only with the advent of Fascism that ‘scientific’ opinion rallied together to describe falling fertility rates as a ‘problem’ to be remedied. On ‘scientific’ debates on population problems see Ipsen, Carl, ‘Dictating Demography: The Problem of Population in Fascist Italy’, PhD thesis, University of California at Berkeley, 1992.Google Scholar
2 In the early years of Mussolini's rule relatively little attention was paid to gender roles, and the Fasci femminili (the Fascist Party's women's groups) were largely ignored or treated with hostility by many male hierarchs.Google Scholar
3 For example, many similar initiatives were introduced in interwar France although in a different, democratic context. See Thébaud, Françoise, ‘Maternité e famille entre les deux guerres: Idéologies et politique familiale’, in Thalmann, Rita (ed.), Femmes et fascismes, Tierce, Paris, 1986, pp. 85–97.Google Scholar
4 The Italian campaign was very different from the Nazi form of pronatalism in that it lacked a clear eugenic–racist approach, at least until this was added at the end of the 1930s. Despite quite a lot of scientific interest in eugenics in Liberal Italy, the Fascist campaign was concerned more with quantity than quality. One reason for this was the influence of the Church which, emphasizing the sanctity of all human life, categorically condemned such aspects of the Nazi policies as sterilization. See Pogliano, Claudio, ‘Scienza e stirpe: eugenica in Italia (1912–1939)’, Passato e presente, 5, 1984, pp. 61–87 and Quine, Maria S., ‘From Malthus to Mussolini: The Italian Eugenics Movement and Fascist Population Policy, 1890–1938’, PhD thesis, London University, 1990, part 1.Google Scholar
5 This is not to deny the fact that new roles did emerge for women under Fascism (e.g. see De Grazia, Victoria, How Fascism Ruled Women. Italy 1922–1945, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1992), but more to emphasize that these were always to some degree shaped by the dominant maternalist ideology.Google Scholar
6 The history of sexuality has received scant attention in Italy compared with other European countries such as France and Britain. For a pioneering work see Wanrooij, Bruno P. F., Storia del pudore: la questione sessuale in Italia 1860–1940, Marsilio, Venice, 1990.Google Scholar
7 Mussolini stated this aim in his often-quoted Ascension Day speech (Discorso dell'ascensione. Il regime fascista per la grandezza dell'Italia [Speech given to the Chamber of Deputies 26th May 1927], 1927), the speech which served to launch the demographic campaign publicly. In 1933, as greater realism dawned, he reduced the target to 50 million. Italy's population at the time was just over 40 million.Google Scholar
8 On the general features of the Italian fertility decline, see Massimo, Livi-Bacci, A History of Italian Fertility during the Last Two Centuries, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1977.Google Scholar
9 Marconcini, Federico, Culle vuote. Rilievi e considerazioni sulla denatalità europea, Como, 1935, p.219, cited in Consonni, Giancarlo and Tonon, Graziella, ‘Milano, classe e metropoli tra due economie di guerra’, Annali Feltrinelli, 1979–80, pp. 405–510, p.414.Google Scholar
10 Molinari, Alessandro, ‘Il bilancio demografico del 1928 e la bassa natalità milanese’, Milano, January 1929, p.10, cited in Consonni, and Tonon, , ‘Milano’, p. 414.Google Scholar
11 Live births per 1,000 population. 1931 15.47 1932 15.28 1933 14.39 1934 14.43 1935 14.86 1936 14.58 1937 15.57 1938 16.34 1939 15.99 (From Bollettino di Statistica, supplement to Milano, March 1940, p.4.)Google Scholar
12 See Consonni, and Tonon, , ‘Milano’, p. 501.Google Scholar
13 On these measures, see Glass, David V., Population Policies and Movements in Europe, Clarendon, Oxford, 1940; Horn, David, Social Bodies. Science, Reproduction, and Italian Modernity, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1994.Google Scholar
14 The tax was levied, from January 1927, on all unmarried men aged between 25 and 65. Graduated according to age and income, the level was subsequently increased a number of times and eventually came to represent quite a substantial level of taxation.Google Scholar
15 These benefits, such as tax reductions, were given to state employees with over seven children and other families with over 10.Google Scholar
16 A report compiled by the Prefecture in 1934 found only 1,066 women in the province who had given birth to between 15 and 25 live children. Not all these children had survived infancy. (Report compiled by di Milano, Prefetto, January 1934, Archivio di Stato di Milano, Fondo Gabinetto della Prefettura (hereafter ASM, Gab Pref), cat. 24 – ‘Demografia’, b. 498.) Google Scholar
17 See Casalini, Mario, La protezione e l'assicurazione della maternità e la difesa della prima infanzia, Istituto Editoriale di Monografie di Istituzioni ed Aziende, Rome, 1934, p.25.Google Scholar
18 These figures are taken from a local official survey of large families in 1928. The 32 ‘large families’ noted in the survey were all agricultural families, with between 11 and 18 children born live. The number of surviving children was far lower. (See ASM, Gab Pref, cat 24 – ‘Demografia’, b. 498, ‘Famiglie numerose, circolare 2 maggio 1928, Somme stanziate, offerte, felicitazioni, varie’, f. ‘Aicurzo’.) Google Scholar
19 Casalini, , La protezione e l'assicurazione, p. 24.Google Scholar
20 Casalini, (ibid., p.15) gives the following figures for 1932 for the average number of children per marriage in Milan according to the father's profession: Agricultural workers 3.65 Transport and related jobs 3.54 Service and portering workers 3.44 Landowners and the wealthy 3.43 Industry and commerce 3.34 Workers 3.21 Unemployed or job not known 3.15 State employees (lower grades) 3.16 Liberal professions and clerks 2.67 Google Scholar
21 ‘Stato fascista e famiglia fascista’, Critica Fascista, 8, 1937, pp.113–116.Google Scholar
22 State employees got family allowances as early as 1928, whereas these were only introduced for industrial workers' families in the mid-1930s to offset the economic hardship caused by the 40 hour week. The money came from a fund to which both workers and employers contributed. In 1936 this was extended to all industrial workers, including those who worked more than 40 hours, and in 1937 to waged agricultural workers. Marriage loans, partly introduced because of their apparent success in Germany, were awarded to couples under 26 years old and with annual incomes under 12,000 Lire. The debt was gradually reduced with the birth of each successive child and could be cancelled totally for those couples having four live children in the first six and a half years of marriage.Google Scholar
23 In reality ONMI was founded in 1925 to tackle the problem of infant mortality, and the pro-natalist rhetoric was largely grafted onto the original blueprint with the launch of the demographic campaign two years later. On ONMI, see Bresci, Annalise, ‘L/Opera nazionale maternità e infanzia nel ventennio fascista’, Italia contemporanea, 192, 1993, pp.421–442.Google Scholar
24 Saraceno, Chiara, ‘Constructing Families, Shaping Women's Lives: The Making of Italian Families Between Market Economy and State Interventions’, in Gillis, J., Tilly, L. and Levine, D. (eds), The European Experience of Declining Fertility, 1850–1970, Blackwell, Oxford, 1992, pp.251–269, 260.Google Scholar
25 Livi-Bacci's study of Italian fertility decline found both these factors significant (see ‘Factors Involved in Italy's Fertility Decline’, Chapter 5 of Livi-Bacci, A History of Italian Fertility, pp.189–215).Google Scholar
26 See Treves, Anna, he migrazioni interne nell'Italia fascista, Einaudi, Turin, 1976.Google Scholar
27 The population of the city of Milan grew from 718,800 in 1921 to 1,114,111 in 1936 (Provincia di Milano, Cento Anni della Provincia di Milano, Milan, 1959), p.73. Sesto San Giovanni grew from 18,274 in 1921 to 35,845 in 1934 (Fascio di Combattimento di Sesto San Giovanni, Sesto San Giovanni fascista industriale, Milan, 1934).Google Scholar
28 On the changes in the Lombard countryside and the spread of urban culture, see Valentina, Gianluigi Delia, ‘Agricoltura e aspetti del rapporto città-campagna in Lombardia tra crisi e seconda guerra mondiale’, Società e storia, 20, 1983.Google Scholar
29 Ibid., p.342.Google Scholar
30 As Alison McKinnon has pointed out, the seemingly obvious fact of female agency in fertility decline has often escaped demographers in their excessive focus on statistics and grand trend explanations. (McKinnon, , ‘Were Women Present at the Demographic Transition? Questions from a Feminist Historian to Historical Demographers’, Gender and History, 7, 2, 1995, pp. 222–240.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
31 A number of contemporary studies come to this conclusion. For example a study by Guglielmo Tagliacarne (‘Concepimenti antenuziali e ritardo della nascita del primogenito in Italia’, Giornale degli economisti e rivista di statistica, 2, 1936, pp.92–108) showed how, in certain northern areas including Lombardy, the length of time between marriage and the birth of the first child was noticeably longer on average than in some southern areas such as Calabria.Google Scholar
32 Passerini, Luisa, Torino operaia e fascismo. Una storia orale, Laterza, Rome-Bari, 1984, p.182.Google Scholar
33 Ibid., pp.221–222.Google Scholar
34 The Public Security Laws of 6 November 1926, which banned propaganda for abortion as well as for contraception, did no more than reinforce the Zanardelli Code of 1889. These measures were further clarified by the 1930 Rocco Code, which saw the repression of abortion as a key element of the demographic campaign. Three types of abortion were distinguished, abortion against the will of the woman (7–12 years' imprisonment), abortion with the consent of the woman (2–5 years for both woman and abortionist), and abortion carried out by the woman herself (1–4 years). Inciting a woman to abort herself and providing her with the means to do so was also punishable, as was harming a woman believed to be pregnant by aborting her. The last two were innovations not in the Zanardelli Code. The Church's views were even stronger than this, opposing even medically motivated abortions necessary to save the mother's life (permitted under Fascist legislation). Although the Fascist laws were not much stronger than Liberal legislation they were much more rigorously applied through a series of measures such as the professionalization of midwives in order to gain tighter state control over this group, who were believed (often with reason) to be responsible for many abortions. (On midwives under Fascism see Triolo, Nancy, ‘The Angelmakers: Fascist Pro-natalism and the Normalisation of Midwives in Sicily’, PhD thesis, University of California at Berkeley, 1989).Google Scholar
35 Fascists used both this term (stirpe) and razza to denote all Italians. Neither had biologically racist connotations and could include, in contrast to Nazi notions of race, ethnic minorities such as Jews.Google Scholar
36 Handwritten letter from the Ministero dell'Interno to the Prefect of Milan, 15 May 1928, Archivio Centrale di Stato, Fondo Pubblica Sicurezza, b. 173, f. Milano Ordine Pubblica, sf ‘Agitazioni varie’ (hereafter ACS, P.S. b. 173, ‘Agit varie’).Google Scholar
37 It is quite astonishing that news of the event was actually published, given that strikes and political agitations were usually only reported if they took place abroad. I have been unable to discover if the authorities reprimanded the paper for this but a message was sent to the Interior Ministry noting the first article (note from Viceprefetto di Milano to On. Divisione Affari Generali e Riservati, 21 April 1928, ACS, P.S. b. 173, ‘Agit varie’) and a second message in May (handwritten letter from Ministero dell'Interno to Prefetto di Milano, 15 May 1928, ACS, P.S., b. 173, ‘Agit varie’) asked for more information about the newspaper.Google Scholar
38 ‘Un paese in subbuglio per l'arresto di un medico. Dimostrazioni di donne che vogliono liberarlo’, L'Ambrosiano, 26 April 1928, p.4.Google Scholar
39 ‘Il “fermo” di un dottore di Rho e una dimostrazione di donne’, L'Ambrosiano, 21 April 1928, p.4. On this occasion the demonstration was probably facilitated by the fact that 21 April was a public holiday – the Fascist festival for the ‘Birth of Rome’.Google Scholar
40 ‘Un paese in subbuglio’.Google Scholar
41 There is some disagreement between police records and the newspaper about exactly when the arrest and demonstrations took place and how many people were involved. According to the police, the arrest took place on the 18th, and the first demonstration two days later, with another one on the 23rd, the numbers never rising above 100 persons. (Report from Prefect of Milan to Ministry of Interior, 11 May 1928, ACS, P.S. b. 173, ‘Agit varie’.) The press put the number of protesters much higher at a few hundred, and reported the last demonstration as taking place on the 25th.Google Scholar
42 ‘Un paese in subbuglio’.Google Scholar
43 Ibid.Google Scholar
44 Ibid.Google Scholar
45 Report from Prefetto di Milano to Ministero dell'Interno, 11 May 1928, ACS, P.S. b. 173, ‘Agit varie’.Google Scholar
46 Biglietto postale di stato urgente from Prefetto di Milano to Ministero dell'Interno, 26 July 1928, ACS, P.S. b. 173, ‘Agit varie’.Google Scholar
47 This information, from August, is the latest recorded in the archive files. At that point the case against the doctor was still being prepared. (Letter from Prefetto di Milano to Ministero dell'Interno, 20 August 1928, ACS, P.S.b. 173, ‘Agit varie’.)Google Scholar
48 Report from Legione territoriale carabinieri reali di Milano, Compagnia Milano esterna, in ASM, Gab Pref, cat. 5 – ‘Questura’, b. 224, ‘Moralità Pubblica’, f. ‘Aborti e infanticidi’. The newspaper reports three of the women as married and three unmarried. (‘Un paese in subbuglio’).Google Scholar
49 This would not totally exonerate him as, under a new Fascist law of 1927, a law expressly created to prevent illegal abortions, he should at least have reported the miscarriage to the local medical authorities.Google Scholar
50 ‘Un paese in subbuglio’.Google Scholar
51 I have not been able to examine the court records due to the 70 year exclusion rule covering such archival documents.Google Scholar
52 Because not enough workers were available locally, dormitories were built in the late nineteeth and early twentieth century, and in the Fascist period these became increasingly used as a means of social control. For example, the girls living there were given domestic science classes. See Ariano, E., Canavesi, G.P., Gay, M., Riva, N., Sabatelli, F. and Trabattoni, L., ‘I dormitori-convitto e i villaggi operai in una zona tessile del Nord-Milano’, Classe, 14, 1977, pp.145–164.Google Scholar
53 Report Ten. Colonello Angelo Cercia to Prefetto di Milano, 06 April 1929, ASM, Gab Pref, cat. 5 – ‘Questura’, b. 225, ‘Moralità pubblica’. This report argued that the situation was very worrying. Concern was not, however, about the ‘enterprising young men’. The remedy for this distressing situation was to be moral intervention by the clergy and the girls' parents. Direct police action was considered inappropriate.Google Scholar
54 In 1931, 77 per cent of all textile workers in Italy were female, the highest percentage in the world. Many of the violent strikes in the Legnano area did, in fact, take place after the abortion riot (in 1931 and 1932 in particular) but there was also considerable unrest in 1927 caused by the crisis in the cotton industry precipitated by the revaluation of the lira. (See Bianchi, Bruna, ‘I tessili: lavoro, salute, conflitti’, Annali Feltrinelli, 1979–80, pp. 973–1070).Google Scholar
55 Ibid., p. 1010.Google Scholar
56 Letter from Questore to Prefetto di Milano, ASM, Gab Pref, cat. 5 – ‘Questura’, b. 224, ‘Moralità pubblica’, f. ‘Aborti e infanticidi’. The 200 Lire price is cited also by the newspaper (‘Un paese in subbuglio’). Although 200 Lire was quite a lot of money for a poor woman at the time it was very little compared with some abortion prices noted in police records. Another file in the same archive folder (‘Aborti e infanticidi’) records the arrest, in September 1928, of a Milanese abortionist who charged 550 Lire. An article in the communist newspaper L'Unità in 1926 also notes the going price as 500 or 600 Lire (‘Maternità, infanzia e “beneficenza”’, L'Unità, 7 October 1926, p.3.)Google Scholar
57 ‘Un paese in subbuglio’.Google Scholar
58 Given the illegality of the situation, such arguments were unlikely to be discussed with the journalist investigating the events.Google Scholar
59 See Horn, , Social Bodies, pp.82–3.Google Scholar
60 Detragiache, Denise, ‘L'Italie fasciste e la repression de l'avortement’, Mélanges de l'École Française de Rome, 1980, pp 691–735.Google Scholar
61 Passerini, , ‘Resistenza demografica’, Chapter 5 of Torino operaia e fascismo, pp.181–223; Minardi, Marco, Ragazze dei borghi in tempo di guerra, Edizioni dell'Istituto Storico della Resistenza di Parma, Parma, 1991.Google Scholar
62 Studies on other areas, or generally on Italy as a whole, tended to come to the same conclusion (see Ipsen, , ‘Dictating Demography’, p. 102.)Google Scholar
63 ‘Maternità, infanzia’.Google Scholar
64 Alberti, Salvatore, La mortalità antenatale, Vita e pensiero, Milan, 1934. Alberti's survey focused on women attending the Milan paediatric clinic with a sick child. From this small sample he made a statistical projection of the number of miscarriages in the city for 1923–33, and concluded that possibly as many as 25–30 per cent of all conceptions ended in miscarriage, and that some of these were abortions.Google Scholar
65 Between November 1928 and July 1929, for example, 80 people were arrested for carrying out abortions, including 16 midwives, two chemists and one doctor. (Letter from the Questore to the Prefetto ‘Relazione sulla moralità della sicurezza pubblica in Milano’, ASM, Gab Pref, cat. 5 – ‘Questura’, b. 225, ‘Moralità pubblica.’) See also ASM, Gab Pref, cat. 5 – ‘Questura’, b. 173, f. ‘Aborti e infanticidi’.Google Scholar
66 Detragiache, , ‘L'Italie fasciste’, p.733. These figures were compiled from a study of abortion cases which came to trial between 1938 and 1941. Her sources, as she herself admits, are very partial, being records deposited in central archives in Rome. There are no records for 1922–37. Her statistics show that Milan was above the national average for the number of abortions known to the judicial authorities in comparison with the size of its population, which could either mean that abortion was more widespread in Milan or that the police were more efficient there.Google Scholar
67 See Ibid., p. 706. In the cases Detragiache studied, the most common social origin was working class or peasant. Only a tiny number were wealthy, probably due to the greater ability to evade the law of the rich who could, for example, afford an actual doctor. Their abortions were less likely to go wrong and so be found out. Most defendants claimed that the motive for their abortion was safeguarding their honour, but since this meant a more lenient sentence it reveals little.Google Scholar
68 See ASM, Gab Pref, cat. 5 – ‘Questura’, b. 225, ‘Moralità pubblica’.Google Scholar
69 Letter from the Prefect of Milan to the Minister of the Interior, 1929, ASM, Gab Pref, cat. 5 – ‘Questura’, b. 224, ‘Moralità pubblica’, f. ‘Violenze carnali’.Google Scholar
70 On changing gender roles in such families, see Saraceno, Chiara, ‘Percorsi di vita femminile nella classe operaia: tra famiglia e lavoro durante il fascismo’, Memoria, 2, 1981, pp. 64–75; Willson, Perry R., The Clockwork Factory: Women and Work in Fascist Italy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993, pp.204–205.Google Scholar
71 Passerini, , Torino operaia e fascismo, pp.214–220.Google Scholar
72 This view was put forward by a doctor (identified only by the name ‘Doctor physicus’) writing in L'Unità in 1926, (‘La protezione della maternità nella “grande Milano”’, L'Unità, 9 October 1926, p.3).Google Scholar
73 One reason for this may be that recent immigrants had less secure networks in a city like Milan, and found it harder to hide abortions from the authorities.Google Scholar
74 Detragiache, , ‘L'Italie fasciste’, p.713.Google Scholar
75 Ibid., pp.721–22.Google Scholar
76 Clearly the demonstrations were not about this alone. The local community was essentially defending a doctor who had helped many poor people. However, this interpretation of the events seems valid given that they defended him even though he was an abortionist.Google Scholar
