Italy's embryo war

Today and tomorrow the Italians go to the polls to vote on four different questions about artificial reproduction and human embryonic research. The Catholic Church is asking people to abstain from voting. Some commentators said that by taking this position the church in Italy is taking one of its biggest political gambles in decades.

The four proposals that Italians must decide in the referendum involve cancelling:

¤ restrictions on clinical and experimental research with embryos;

¤ legal restrictions on artificial insemination, such as the three-embryo limit on those created in vitro;

¤ the rights of the one conceived so that they are subject to the rights of those already born; and

¤ a ban on heterologous insemination, namely, with the participation of a third person other than the couple.

Over the past 20 years, almost all referendum proposals in Italy have failed to attract a quorum to the polls, so supporters of the referendum have focused much of their energy on encouraging people to vote. The Church is taking a calculated risk when it is exhorting people not to vote.

On the other hand one must note that the last time the Church told people how to vote, it resulted in two crushing defeats. The Church heavily backed two referenda, one in 1974 making divorce illegal and one in 1981 making abortion a crime. Italians, who are overwhelmingly Catholic, flocked to the polls, but not to do the Church's bidding. They passed both referendums to uphold the legality of divorce and abortion.

Pope Benedict XVI spoke publicly about the referendum, giving the Italian bishops' boycott campaign a powerful boost.

The bishops' "clear and concrete" commitment to educating voters was a "sign of the pastors' concern for every human being, which can never be reduced to a means, but is an end", the Pope said on May 30 in a speech to hundreds of participants of the general assembly of the Italian bishops' conference in the synod hall at the Vatican.

Earlier this year, Cardinal Ruini said boycotting the polls "is in no way a disengagement" from one's civic duties. "It is a stronger and more effective way to oppose the referendum" by making sure the vote is invalidated completely, he said in a March 7 speech to members of the permanent council of Italian bishops.

While some Catholics questioned the move, many Italian Church leaders rallied behind Cardinal Ruini and endorsed his call to abstain from the vote.

Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice said it was legitimate to "decide not to take into consideration" a proposed referendum that seeks to repeal a law. Democracy would not be well served by "millions of people expressing (their opinion) on such complex problems with a simple check mark on a voting card", he told the Italian daily, La Repubblica, on May 23.

If a sufficient number of voters do not cast a ballot, the church's defence of the restrictions will be upheld, but the bishops are gambling that widespread abstention would be read more as support for their position than as another example of growing voter apathy.