March 26, 2025

Italian appeal court acquitted four doctors for refusing to save Valentina Milluzzo’s life

In October 2016, Valentina Milluzzo of Italy, 32, was miscarrying much-wanted twins at 19 weeks of pregnancy. But she died in the Cannizzaro Hospital in Catania Sicily after being denied an abortion, despite no hope for survival of her twins. She became septic and suffered hours of agony while sepsis destroyed her organs. A doctor dismissed this as “labour pains” and refused to give her pain relief. Valentina’s parents were present and heard the doctor say he couldn’t do an abortion because he was a “conscientious objector”. Although one of the fetuses had died, greatly increasing the risk of sepsis for Valentina, the doctor refused to act because “the child’s heart is still beating.”

The hospital rejected the family’s claims that the doctor was a “conscientious objector” but the family is supported by their direct eyewitness testimony as well as the hospital’s own hastily-published preliminary report, which revealed negligence on the part of several doctors. Crucially, there is never any excuse for a pregnant woman to develop sepsis while in hospital, because it is a fast-acting, life-threatening condition that is almost inevitable once a woman starts miscarrying. The family filed suit against the hospital and doctors.

In November 2018, seven doctors at the Cannizzaro Hospital in Sicily were indicted for Valentina’s death. The charges were multiple culpable manslaughter. Source.  Unfortunately, the trial would focus on medical negligence and not conscientious objection, even though the latter was the primary cause of death because it led directly to the numerous instances of medical negligence. The trial was to start in July 2019 but was delayed, then came the pandemic.

Finally, in October 2022, four of the doctors were found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to six months, though with suspended sentences. The other three doctors were acquitted. Source. During the sentencing, the court did not discuss the fact that the doctors were conscientious objectors.

The four doctors appealed the decision. In November 2024, the appeal court acquitted the doctors who refused to save Valentina’s life, ruling that “the facts grounding the offence do not exist”. But the doctor’s claim of conscientious objection was not even before the court. Since Valentina’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. Source

For more background, see our entry about Valentina under “Victims of CO”: Valentina Milluzzo † (2016) – Italy.