Italian Parliamentary Candidates Support Moratorium On Abortion, Likely To Become An Issue In Campaign

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 15 Feb 2008 - 9:00 PDT

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Abortion is playing an important role in Italy's parliamentary elections in April, as former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi recently said that he favors a United Nations ban on the procedure, the AP/Google.com reports. According to the AP/Google.com, abortion is rarely an election topic in Italy. Under a 1978 law, abortion is legal up to 12 weeks gestation in the country. After that, abortion is legal only if the pregnancy is deemed a "grave danger" to a woman's life, according to the AP/Google.com.

Giuliano Ferrara, a conservative Italian newspaper editor who served as a minister in Berlusconi's government, on Tuesday announced he would run for Parliament on an antiabortion platform. In December 2007, Ferrara proposed a universal moratorium on abortion in the Italian newspaper Il Foglio after the U.N. General Assembly called for a moratorium on the death penalty. The proposal was supported by Roman Catholic officials, including Italian Cardinal Camillo Ruini.

Berlusconi in response to Ferrara's proposal said that "recognizing the right to life from conception to natural death is a principle that the U.N. could make its own." However, on an Italian television show on Tuesday, Berlusconi said the abortion debate should be left up to individual citizens (Winfield, AP/Google.com, 2/12). He later said that abortion "should remain outside the electoral competition."

Leaders of the country's center-left Democratic Party are opposed to the proposal, as well as to changes in the existing abortion law. Italy's "left-leaning" La Repubblica newspaper said Berlusconi was "trying to appease" the Catholic Church "by claiming Catholic values as his own," Agence France-Presse reports (Agence France-Presse, 2/12).

Polls have indicated that Berlusconi's coalition is likely to win the election. If Berlusconi wins and Ferrara's proposal gains support, it could be considered in the next legislature, the AP/Google.com reports. Ferrara has emphasized that his campaign is separate from Berlusconi's because Berlusconi "doesn't believe" in the proposal "enough." In 2004, 136,715 abortions were performed in Italy, compared with 234,801 in 1982, the AP/Google.com reports (AP/Google.com, 2/12).

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