San Marino residents on Sunday voted overwhelmingly to legalize abortion, rejecting a 150-year-old law that had criminalized it and making the tiny republic the latest majority Catholic state to approve the procedure under certain circumstances.
About 77 percent of voters approved a referendum proposal calling for abortion to be legal in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, according to official returns broadcast on San Marino RTV.
Abortion would also be legal beyond that point if the woman’s life is in danger, or if her physical or psychological health is at risk because of fetal anomalies or malformations.
Photo: AP
With the “yes” votes winning, San Marino’s parliament must now draft a bill to legalize the procedure. Turnout for the referendum was 41 percent in the microstate of 33,000 people surrounded by Italy.
San Marino, one of the world’s oldest republics, had been one of the last European states that still criminalized abortion. With Sunday’s result, it now joins other predominantly Catholic states such as Ireland, which legalized abortion in 2018, and neighboring Italy, where abortion has been legal since 1978.
Abortion is still illegal in Malta and Andorra, and Poland introduced a near-total ban on the procedure this year.
The San Marino referendum was set after about 3,000 people signed a petition drive to overturn its abortion law, which dates from 1865.
Women in San Marino seeking an abortion usually go to Italy for the procedure.
However, proponents of the referendum said that put an undue financial burden on them and penalized women who got pregnant as a result of rape.
Sara Casadei of the Noi Ci Siamo campaign that pushed for a “yes” vote in the referendum, was pleased with the outcome.
“We supported this for the simple reason that it seemed right that women have a choice and aren’t forced to go somewhere else, but to have the services on our own territory,” she said.
Maria Prassede Venturini, a pediatrician and representative of the Welcome Life campaign that backed a “no” vote, said her group would continue working for a “culture welcoming life” that focuses on care for the “two main protagonists: the mother and child.”
Opponents of the measure had said that in San Marino, even minors can receive free contraception at pharmacies, including the morning-after pill.
The Catholic Church had strongly opposed the measure.
In the buildup to the vote, Bishop of San Marino-Montefeltro Andrea Turazzi said the Catholic Church was “decidedly against” the decriminalization initiative, although he said the campaign had raised awareness about the need to provide better services and care, especially for mothers in need.
The Vatican firmly opposes abortion, holding that human life begins at conception and that all life must be protected from conception until natural death.
“For us, its inconceivable that a mother resorts to abortion because of some economic troubles,” Turazzi told Vatican News.
Voter Federica Gatti said as she cast her ballot that a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy or not involves “several personal, religious and moral reasons,” but that the state “must provide its citizens this opportunity.”
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
RSS