The Guardian (London), November 16, 2005
Row over pill may see pro-life activists in Italy's abortion clinics
By John Hooper in Rome
Silvio Berlusconi's government is considering putting pro-life activists into state-funded abortion advice centres to discourage women from terminating their pregnancies.
The move follows a furious dispute over the growing use in Italy of the abortion pill, Mifepristone, which pro-life campaigners fear makes termination of pregnancies easier.
At the Vatican, the pope's chief adviser on health, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, told the Guardian yesterday: "An abortion, small or great, is homicide all the same." His remark was the latest in a string of condemnations by senior church officials of the pill, also known as RU-486. The Vatican's daily, L'Osservatore Romano, said last month the pill was an example of "science in the service of death" and the Archbishop of Genoa, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, has drawn a comparison between the use of the pill and King Herod's massacre of the innocents.