Search is Powered by Google
Abortion News

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

email icon email to a friend   printer icon printer friendly   write icon view / write opinions   rate icon rate article
Current Article Ratings:

Patient / Public:not yet rated

Health Professional:5 stars

5 (1 votes)

Article Opinions: 0 posts

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).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

© 2007 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.




Weekly Newsletters Daily News Alerts
Home About Us News Licensing Free Website Feeds Free Tools & Content Links Tell a Friend Accessibility Help / FAQ Article Submission Contact Us
Psychiatry Urology
Bipolar Schizophrenia

medical news gadget

Add to Google


developers
website gadget code
website news code
medical news rss feed links


MedReader RSS Reader


That Cough May Mean You Have Acid Reflux
That Cough May Mean You Have Acid Reflux

A chronic cough is just one of the atypical symptoms of Gastro Esophageal Reflux Disease, or GERD. Asthma, sinusitis, laryngitis and chest pain are some of the others. Getting a proper diagnosis is the first step to getting proper treatment.

more videos are available in our health videos section.