Vatican blasts Abortion Pill

[theHawk]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051007/ap_on_he_me/italy_abortion_pill

By ALESSANDRA RIZZO, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 28 minutes ago



ROME - Italy's first experiment with the abortion pill RU-486 is sparking controversy in this overwhelmingly Catholic country, with the Vatican paper condemning the experiment this week as an "act against life."

The denunciation by L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican paper, rekindled accusations of interference in a secular state's domestic affairs. With parliamentary elections due next spring, the Italian Catholic Church has been very aggressive in expressing its opinion on political issues.

"Yet another act against life," L'Osservatore Romano said in its Thursday edition. "Once again science is put at the service of death."

Last month Sant'Anna hospital in Turin, northern Italy, started giving out the abortion pill. On Sept. 21 — after about two weeks and after 26 women took the pill — Health Minister Francesco Storace halted the experiment, citing legal and health reasons.

Storace said the pill could only be administered if the patient was hospitalized, to comply with Italy's abortion law.

Critics said the decision by Storace — whose right-wing National Alliance party is generally close to the Vatican — was motivated by political rather than medical reasons. But the minister has dismissed the allegations, saying he just wanted to protect women's health.

This week the ethical committee for the Piedmont region, which includes Turin, said the experiment could resume, provided that women taking the pill were kept in hospital for at least two nights and were fully informed about the procedure.

"Our goal was to resume the experiment, so we decided to accept the ministry's requests," Mario Valpreda, Piedmont's top health official and the president of the committee, said in a telephone interview. He insisted that experience in other countries where the pill is used shows that hospitalization is not needed.

The hospital would resume administering the pill on Oct. 17, Valpreda said.

The Church, which is strongly opposed to abortion, has considerable sway in Italy. But in a blow to the late Pope John Paul II, a Vatican-backed referendum in 1981 failed to overturn the country's law permitting abortion.

L'Osservatore Romano said that Turin experiment "makes abortion become an increasingly easy (method of) contraception, the most tragically effective one."

"We have arrived to such an eclipsing of conscience that we see the act of killing the most defenseless of the innocent as an act of freedom," the paper said.

In recent months the Italian Catholic Church has spoken out on issues from assisted fertility to legal right for gay couples. It has dismissed accusations that it interferes with Italy's affairs, maintaining it has a duty to express an opinion on moral issues.

The Vatican's outspokenness has in turn drawn criticism.

"The only real act against life would be the return to clandestine abortion," Daniele Capezzone, whose Radical Party is a longtime Vatican foe, said in response to L'Osservatore.

The abortion pill, RU-486 or mifepristone, can be used to terminate pregnancy up to 49 days after the beginning of the last menstrual cycle. It was invented in France in the 1980s.

It differs from the "morning-after" pill, which is intended to prevent pregnancy by ensuring that an egg does not become fertilized.

Bravo Pope