Italy: Women to be paid 'a fee' for rejecting abortion

AKI ^ | 6/1/2010

[markomalley]

Milan, 1 June (AKI) - 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," Formigoni (photo) 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.

Formigoni, an ally of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, 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.

"We want to support and the birth rate, by removing the greatest obstacles, beginning with the economic obstacle, which makes it more difficult to make a choice to support life," Formigoni said.

Formigoni has a record of fighting abortion. In 1989 when he was a European MP, Formigoni denounced a therapeutic abortion involving a five-month female foetus diagnosed as having a genetic anomaly.

In 2008 Formigoni's Lombardy region moved to limit abortions in cases where the foetus is more than 22 weeks and three days.

When Italian hospitals first started dispensing the RU486 pill earlier this year, Formigoni said it was in conflict with Italy's abortion law.

[Jack Hydrazine]

It would be interesting to know what the fertility rate would be without the immigrants, illegal aliens, and their first-generation children.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I'm sure somebody has these figures, but I haven't found them yet. (If you do, please let me know!)

I did find the following, which is not quite "it" but which is perhaps related:

"Because of the “baby bust” of 1965-1982, there are now fewer non-Hispanic white women in the child-bearing years. White and Asian birthrates are below replacement, black fertility at the 2.1 replacement while Hispanic fertility is 2.99, almost 50% higher than replacement fertility. The large number of Hispanic women in their child-bearing years will increase the number of Hispanic children that are born. "

This is from the Population Resource Center, May 8, 2010.

[billorites]

I think that's the problem I have with it. It's inappropriate for the government to be encouraging or discouraging procreation via financial incentives.

Kinda creepy to my mind.

[Jack Hydrazine]

Thanks. I didn’t realize there was a baby bust from ‘65 to ‘82. Those years roughly correspond to major acceleration of the women’s lib movement when women abandoned the home in droves to search for fulfillment in the men’s world of work. In the year 2000 census there was a 12 or 13 percent increase in the number of women staying home compared to 1990. I don’t know if that is due to more immigrants or to white American women. Even so white women aren’t having children like Hispanic women are. Hispanics still value family more so than Whitey. I know a lady (white) who has a daughter in college who isn’t going to have children because they are too much work.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I agree with you on creepiness. It really is a decision of the couple, not the govt -— and the carrots-and-sticks approach makes the govt. our owner or trainer or zoo-keeper, which is offensive in itself.

[Mrs. Don-o]

The only major white demographic group still showing greater-than-zero growth rate based on fertility are the LDS. This correlates to early marriage, and a high marriage rate.

And they're not really major. LDS are only 2% of the US population.

If you consider homeschoolers a "demographic group," I think they'd show higher-than ZPG fertility, too. But like the lDS, they're still a small minority.

But maybe in a couple of generations.... :o)