Men and women took to the streets of Italy last week to protest about police behaviour towards a woman who had had a late abortion for fetal abnormality.

A police patrol of seven rushed into the Naples University Hospital, Federico II, after they received an anonymous phone call saying that an illegal abortion had taken place in the hospital’s gynaecology department.

Press reports say that the police interrogated the 39 year old woman as she got back to her room immediately after the procedure and seized the aborted fetus, even though the head of the department rapidly proved that the …