Italy: Abortion and Nationalized Health Care

Abstract

Most of the recent public and scholarly interest in Italy concerning bioethical issues has centered on abortion, general reform of the health care system, and deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. Medical decisions are thought to concern technical rather than moral issues, and are generally left to physicians. Although ethics is a formal part of the medical curriculum only in Catholic universities, physicians have recently shown more of an interest in bioethical issues, as have philosophers. At present, however, the author is aware of only one non-Catholic institution that is devoted to the study of ethical questions in medicine. (KIE abstract)