Proposal to Curb Free Abortions Angers Italy

A senator in Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party caused outrage across the political spectrum yesterday by proposing a law limiting free abortions to one per woman, after which they would be charged.

Under Antonio Gentile's law, after their first free abortion on the state health service, financially comfortable women would have to foot part and then all of the bill, varying from €2,000 to €3,000 (£1,400-£2,000).

Mr Gentile, who has the support of about 20 senators of Forza Italia and its post-fascist coalition ally Alleanza Nazionale, said the proposal was to discourage multiple abortions on the health service and encourage contraception. He told La Repubblica newspaper that young Italians "do not appreciate the value of contraception". He plans to present the law to parliament in September.

"If the government accepts the proposal, the health minister will be able to send out a circular to the regions so they apply the new rules," Mr Gentile told the newspaper La Repubblica.

The proposal has angered politicians from other parties and women's rights advocates barely a week after the Vatican reiterated the Catholic church's stance that a woman's mission is to stay at home and breed.

"Unfortunately we are inundated with Catholic fundamentalists," said one Forza Italia deputy, who disapproves of the proposal.

The MEP Emma Bonino, formerly the European commissioner for humanitarian affairs, told the Guardian: "More and more, we Italians are not European citizens, we are Vatican citizens. Every day we wake up and find there is something new designed to take away women's right to choose."

She said Italy was the only country in Europe where the abortion pill was not on sale, where the morning after pill was not available over the counter and where there are proposals to give chemists the right to refuse to sell morning after pills.

Many saw the proposal by the senator, who has in the past proposed that Mr Berlusconi be awarded the Nobel Peace prize, as an attempt to encourage women to have more children.

Italy's birth rate last year was the lowest in Europe at 9.18 births/1,000 compared to the UK's 10.99/1,000, and the European average of 10.43/ 1,000.

Italy's birth rate has been low for several years with women choosing to focus on careers, and couples gradually reaching a certain financial threshold before starting a family.

To encourage Italians to have more children quickly, the government offered a €1,000 "baby bonus" last year for every second child born by the end of the year.

But the government has clamped down on access to IVF treatment, dashing the hopes of many couples that science might help them have children.

The law, which aims to give embryos equal rights with women, is seen as a victory for hardline Catholics across the political spectrum who voted for it in February.

It restricts IVF treatment to "stable" couples and bans sperm donation and surrogate motherhood.

Embryos cannot be frozen or used for research and women must have three embryos implanted at once, raising the risk of younger women carrying triplets and reducing the chances of the treatment helping older women to conceive.

Left-wing groups are racing to collect half a million signatures needed by September 30 to force a referendum to soften or abolish the IVF law. Women's groups warned that such a law could force women to revert to illegal abortion, which they have not had to do since it became legal in Italy in 1978.

Government figures do not suggest that abortion is a significant factor contributing to Italy's low birth rate.

In 2002, the number of abortions recorded was 130,690, around half the peak of 235,000 reached in 1982.