Abortion in Naples among objectors and humiliations: the story of the “handmaid” by LNDFK
"A gynecologist made me believe I was in the tenth week and wanted to change my mind. They operated on me without painkillers"
ROME – Abort in Naples, Italy, in 2024. Linda Feki, aka LNDFK, spoke a few days ago on Instagram and today at Corriere della Sera the ordeal of the humiliation she had to endure three months ago to terminate her pregnancy. Between objecting staff, rights denied every other day, and disturbing “walks of shame”. A disarming read with the awareness that the artist could even consider herself lucky, given that in some Italian regions the path to abortion is even more complicated, if not sometimes impossible.
Linda Feki defines it as “a dramatic and violent experience, I felt humiliated”. “I show up at the San Paolo hospital in Naples. The gynecologist examines me, he doesn’t even ask me my name, but if I had a partner and what job he did. And then his bill didn’t add up to me. He says I’m on my tenth And he adds that if we had reached this point it meant that we actually wanted to keep the baby. I was convinced of my choice. And I knew for sure why my partner lives in another city. The gynecologist hints that perhaps there is someone else, says that machines don’t make mistakes, and refuses to sign the ultrasound“.
She goes away and consults a private gynecologist, “who explains to me that the wrong parameters had been set. He confirms that I was in the eighth grade, as they also say at Caldarelli, where I decide to go”. In the largest hospital in the South “visits are only possible on Wednesdays because on the other days there are only objectors. The gynecologist decides for the operation, even though there were conditions for using the drug, they put me in a room with two other women right in front of the women giving birth. Neither my partner nor the others are allowed access. Yet having a person next to me would be important painkillersand to this day I wonder if this wasn’t some sort of punishment”.