The northern Italian region of Lombardy is set to pay pregnant women in “economic difficulty” a fee of 4,500 euros if they reject abortion, conservative regional president Roberto Formigoni has said. Under his proposal, beneficiaries would receive 18 monthly instalments of 250 euros. “No woman in Lombardy will have an abortion because of economic difficulty,” Mr Formigoni said on Monday.
Abortion has been legal in overwhelmingly Catholic Italy since 1978 in the first 90 days of pregnancy and until the 24th week if the life of the mother is at risk or the foetus is malformed.
An Italian constitutional court in 1988 ruled a woman can have an abortion without her husband’s permission. Mr Formigoni announced the creation of the 5 million-euro Nasko Fund in March to be financed by the regional government to pay expectant mothers to keep their children.
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Court rules against ethnic adoption
Rome : Italy’s top appeals court on Tuesday ruled that couples who want to adopt a child may not specify its ethnic origins. International adoption requests from any couples expressing “ethnic” preferences are racist and should be “reconsidered” the court’s judges said.
The ruling accepted a request from the court’s prosecutor which was brought by an adoption charity after a court in the southern Italian city of Catania allowed a couple to adopt a child after they had rejected a black or non-European baby.
“Any court decision allowing couples to adopt minors may not accept racial preferences nor may it contain any reference to the child’s race,” the court’s judges wrote.
By arrangement with AKI