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Italian IVF Referendum Ends with Half the Required Vote

IVF restrictions to remain in place

ROME, June 13, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - “The referendum is finished, over, done with,” said Nicola Piepoli, a polling analyst in La Repubblica newspaper. The attempt to gut the Italian IVF law by referendum has failed, thanks to a Vatican approved strategy. On May 31, LifeSiteNews.com reported that a call to boycott the vote by the country’s Catholic bishops would have scuttled the leftist-led crusade against the bill.

By staying home in droves, the Italians gave their approval of the law that includes requirements that artificial forms of reproduction be restricted to heterosexual couples. The law also bans egg or sperm donation so that couples cannot manufacture children with the sperm and ova of strangers; it restricts the number of embryos that can be created and requires that every embryo created actually be implanted and given a chance to live. The law also bans the freezing of embryos and restricts experimental research on living embryos.

Cardinals Ruini, the vicar of the Rome diocese of which the Pope is head, Tettamanzi of Milan and Scola, the Patriarch of Venice, asked Catholics to boycott the vote, ostensibly because the practice of artificial reproduction is understood to be gravely immoral by the Church. The Cardinals knew however, that the law was among the most restrictive in the world and that its restrictions would be retained if the voter turnout fell below the required 50% to make a referendum binding.

At the end of two days of voting, Italy’s interior ministry reported that only 26% voted. “Certainly the referendum was lost by a margin that I would not have expected,” said Emma Bonino, a former EU commissioner and one of the main proponents of the referendum.

The referendum was promoted by a coalition of leftist extremists led by Italy’s Radical Party, a group that makes no secret of its anti-Catholic fanaticism. In the weeks leading up to the vote, one member of the Radical Party implied that Catholics should have no voice in public life. Daniele Capezzone complained of the intervention of the Church, “The Italian political system has done nothing to safeguard the dignity of the Republic… it's one thing for people to express their views freely, quite another when they deliberately meddle with the electoral process.”

Yesterday, Bonino told reporters, “Today we have three victims: the secularism of the state, political authority and the institution of the referendum.”

The Vatican’s gamble on asking Italians to stay home was a fairly safe one. No referendum since 1995 has had the required turnout.

Read Previous LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Pope and Italian Bishops Engage in Tactical Maneuvers to Defend Life in Embryo Referendum
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/may/05053109.html

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