March 12, 2007ITALY entered a moral minefield yesterday, igniting a debate on abortion law as 50,000 protesters marched on Rome to demand gay rights.
Waving rainbow-coloured banners with slogans such as "Better Gay than Opus Dei" and "Homosexuality is not an offence: intolerance is", the demonstrators called on parliament to pass legislation granting legal recognition to de facto and same-sex couples.
As Italy grapples with a church-versus-state debate over "family values", politicians, doctors and the Vatican are pushing for a review of Italy's 1978 abortion laws.
The abortion row blew up yesterday after the weekend death of a six-day-old baby boy who survived an abortion at a Florence hospital.
The baby's mother terminated her 22-week pregnancy based on ultrasound scans that falsely indicated severe birth defects.
The child was born perfectly healthy, but weighed just 500 grams and died of a brain haemorrhage and heart failure after six days in intensive care.
Italy's Health Minister, Livia Tureo, yesterday defended Italy's abortion law, which grants women abortions on demand up to 90 days of pregnancy, and permits abortions until 24 weeks of pregnancy in cases where the mother's physical or psychological health is at risk.
The 29-year-old law also requires doctors to do all they can to save the life of a fetus that survives an abortion.
Ms Tureo said MPs could not have predicted in 1978 the technological advances that now save the lives of babies born at 23 weeks (a full-term baby is born between 38 and 40 weeks).
"Neonatal doctors are faced with enormous difficulties, such as how to treat babies who are born prematurely, and where to set the limits for survival," Ms Tureo said.
The Corriere della Sera newspaper revealed yesterday that a Milanese hospital had banned abortions beyond 22 weeks - in breach of the Italian law.
The health director of the Mangiagalli hospital, Basilio Tiso, said he had to balance the rights of women with the concerns of Catholic doctors.
"I had doctors knocking on my door continually, torn between their professional obligation to save the life of a fetus and the terrible knowledge they would be condemning most of them to a life of suffering," he said, noting that babies born before 23 weeks of pregnancy suffered grave handicaps.
"As science advances, the regulations have to keep up."
A Rome hospital yesterday launched an inquiry into the director of its abortion clinic, who had been forcing patients to sign forms authorising doctors to let surviving fetuses die.
The director of the San Camillo hospital's maternity division, Claudio Donadio, denounced his colleague's actions as "infanticide".
The Vatican compared the abortion of malformed fetuses toNazi "race-purification" policies.
Italy last year recorded 138,123 abortions a year, of which 2449 were classified as late-term abortions performed to safeguard the mother's health.
The number of abortions in Italy has dropped 44per cent since 1982, and fell 6per cent from 2004 to 2005.
The political rows over abortion and homosexuality are opening new fracture lines in Italy's fragile centre-left coalition Government.
A proposed law - bitterly opposed by the Pope - would grant limited inheritance rights to unmarried couples, as well as "next of kin" status if one partner is admitted to hospital.
De facto couples may also apply for property rights and maintenance if they split after three years' cohabitation.
Prime Minister Romano Prodi has agreed to give his MPs - who range from Communists to Catholics - a conscience vote on legislation granting rights to de facto couples.
Mr Prodi is a devoted Catholic but staunch supporter of de facto rights.
One of Mr Prodi's allies, Justice Minister Clemente Mastella of the Catholic EDEUR party, said he was not sure if he could continue to prop up a government that supported gay rights.
The party's support is vital to the Prodi Government, which collapsed briefly last month when it lost a Senate vote to fund its peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.
The Senate meets on March 27 to vote once more on the Afghanistan mission.
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