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Counting
the votes. (Reuters)
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ROME,
June 13, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A referendum
on easing Italy's fertility law failed Monday, June 13, to reach the
necessary 50 percent turnout, invalidating the poll marked by a Roman
Catholic Church boycott call, according to initial results.
Figures
released by the interior ministry showed that less than 30 percent of
Italians voted in the two-day referendum, far short of the 50 percent
needed for the result to be binding, reported Agence France-Presse
(AFP).
Analysts
gave credit to the boycott call spearheaded by the Roman Catholic
Church for trouncing the attempt to relax
Italy
's stringent fertility and bioethics law.
Only
18.7 percent of
Italy
's electorate cast their vote Sunday, June 12, AFP reported.
Italy
was deeply divided over the referendum, which asked people to
authorize medical research on embryos, scrap a reference to the embryo
as a full human being and give people with hereditary diseases access
to medically-assisted procreation, currently permitted only to sterile
couples.
The
referendum also asked whether to abolish current restrictions which
only allow couples to create three embryos that must all be implanted
at the same time, and without checking whether they carry genetic
diseases.
Opponents
say the proposed changes go against what the pope has called the
"inviolability of human life from conception," while
supporters say the current law puts women's health in danger, risks
leaving Italy in the dark ages of medical research, and could lead to
a re-criminalization of abortion.
"Few
vote, referendum drowns," headlined the Corriere della Sera
daily Monday.
The
Church
Analysts
pointed at voter apathy but also at the appeal of Italian cardinals
who, backed by newly-elected Pope Benedict
XVI, urged predominantly Roman Catholic Italians to abstain on moral
grounds.
Bioethics
is one of the many problems facing Pope Benedict XVI, who has a
reputation as a strict defender of conservative Roman Catholic
doctrine.
"The
Church exults," wrote Orazio Petrosillo, Vatican expert in Il
Messaggero, while Turin's
La Stampa
daily said "Catholics could return the slap in the face they
received by the abortion and divorce law," approved in
referendums despite Church opposition in the 1970s.
Although
top prelates and the
Vatican
kept a low profile as the voting continued, Father Gianni Baget Bozzo,
a priest linked to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, said he was
preparing a "Te Deum" hymn of thanksgiving, AFP said.
For
the Church, the vote could mean a long-awaited victory after it lost
referendums in the 1970s and early 1980s which approved divorce and
abortion in the Catholic country, Reuters said.
Supporters
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The
Italian President cast his ballot Sunday. (Reuters)
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Infuriated
and embittered, supporters of change accused the Church of
out-stepping its sphere, AFP said.
"Those
who are sensitive to the influence of the pope let themselves be
conditioned and gave up their right to free choice," lamented
Michele Fasanella, an arts student from the southern Italian city of
Potenza
.
"There
was such a brainwashing campaign by the Church with the elderly, even
the pope spoke out, so the result couldn't have been any
different," said Renato, a Roman typographer, who voted to loosen
the 2004 law along with 14 of his relatives Sunday.
But
the result was also due to the "indifference and laziness of
those who do not vote regardless of the issue at stake,"
according to political analyst Giulio Anselmi.
None
of the five referendums of the past decade succeeded in reaching the
quorum.
Equal
Opportunities Minister Stefania Prestagiacomo had refused to give up
hope, saying that there was still a chance for the quorum to be
reached, AFP said.
If
not,
Italy
will have to "keep a backward law, that jeopardizes the health of
women," the minister was quoted as saying in Corriere.
"Good luck to us!" quipped the minister, who spearheaded the
campaign for change.
Lawmakers
backing change said they would not give up and would try to modify the
law in parliament.
The
law was introduced to stop what had been described as
Italy
's uregulated Wild West approach to fertility treatment. In one case,
a doctor helped a 62-year-old woman have a child in the 1990s, Reuters
said.
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