Image: Valentina Milluzzo
In Sicily, the Court of Appeal of Catania has just acquitted four doctors — Silvana Campione, Giuseppe Maria Alberto Calvo, Alessandra Coffaro, and Vincenzo Filippello — in the case of Valentina Milluzzo, 32 years old, who died from septic shock at the Cannizzaro Hospital on 16 October 2016. Milluzzo was pregnant with twins, who were miscarried shortly before her death, after 17 days of hospitalization in that hospital’s Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics.
The four doctors had been found guilty of manslaughter by the Court of Catania in October 2022 and received a suspended sentence of six months. They appealed, however, and the recent decision by the Court of Appeal, ruled that “the facts grounding the offence do not exist”. This adds a further disappointing twist to this tragic case, which shares significant similarities with the death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland in October 2012. The reasoning behind this new decision will be made public within 90 days, and it remains open to appeal in the Court of Cassation, Italy’s highest court of appeal.
Since Valentina Milluzzo’s death, her family has consistently maintained that her life could have been saved if a timely therapeutic abortion had been performed. Yet throughout her prolonged hospitalization, abortion was never presented as an option because the doctors were conscientious objectors. According to her father, Salvatore Milluzzo, “the doctors’ attention was focused solely on the survival of the two foetuses, while no care was given to [his] daughter”. In court, Salvatore Milluzzo recalled doctors saying to him “for the [foetuses] there is no hope; one of the two little foetuses is already in the vagina. [Valentina] is suffering, but we cannot intervene”.
SOURCES: Report by Elena Caruso, Fellow of the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. E-mail 14 November 2024 ; Conscientious-Objection Info, November 2016 + PHOTO of Valentina ; Tribunale di Catania, Case No. 7271/18, decision of 22 December 2022 (judge Elena Maria Teresa Calamita), on file with Elena Caruso ; La Sicilia 11 November 24 ; Corriere della Sera 3 November 2019.