Posted on 07/04/2003 2:20:33 AM PDT by nickcarraway
BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Tensions soared in Slovakia's ruling coalition on Thursday when parliament approved an abortion bill at the crux of a battle over the role of religion in the largely Roman Catholic country.
Parliament backed the bill, 70-32 with 30 abstentions. But analysts said they did not expect the coalition to fall over it.
The crown slid to 41.615 on the news, from 41.550 earlier, but the currency then found support from foreign buying, firming to 41.500/550.
The law would allow abortions into a 24th week of pregnancy in cases of genetic defects, a European norm, but has caused open hostility between the cabinet's most conservative faction and the coalition's liberal party which authored the bill.
The mostly poor former communist state has been increasingly in the world spotlight. On Tuesday, its parliament became the first in 10 mostly eastern European countries to ratify a treaty enabling them to join the 15-member European Union (news - web sites) next year.
Liberals in Slovakia, a country of 5.4 million people, fear the religious agenda of the ruling Christian Democrat party (KDH) is creeping too much into daily life after decades of being pushed underground by communism.
KDH has pushed for students to be required to study Catholic doctrines in state schools. KDH has said the coalition could fall if the bill, which still requires approval from President Rudolf Schuster, takes effect.
"The coalition is in crisis," KDH chairman Pavol Hrusovsky told reporters after the vote.
15 DAYS TO STUDY LAW
The coalition's liberal ANO party, author of the bill, was backed by opposition deputies. Party chairman Pavol Rusko said he was pleased by the result but expected a veto from Schuster.
"To be honest, I don't expect the president to sign this bill, and it will probably return to parliament," he said.
Schuster's spokesman said the president would probably use the entire 15 days allowed to study the law before making a decision.
The two remaining government parties, Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda's SDKU and the ethnic-Hungarian SMK, do not back the draft law because they say a Health Ministry decree already has made the proposed abortion rule legal.
ANO decided to push for a law after KDH moved to make the ministry decree invalid by contesting it in Slovakia's Constitutional Court. The court will rule on the issue in September.
Analysts cited two reasons for believing the law would not topple the coalition:
-- If Schuster vetoes the bill, the ANO party and the opposition will be hard pressed to then find the 76 votes they would need to override the decision.
-- Neither the ANO nor KDH party has offered to withdraw from the ruling grouping over the issue.
The leaders of coalition parties were due to meet at 1300 GMT on Thursday to discuss the issue. SDKU said it was set on preventing the government's collapse.
Last month a dispute erupted in neighboring Poland, birthplace of Pope John Paul (news - web sites) II, over the arrival of a Dutch floating abortion clinic whose activities the powerful church condemned as "murders and piracy."
The really sad thing is that, that is still better than here.
Reporters have got to learn to get these dependent clauses straight. No wonder there's so much confusion in the public press these days ~ the reporters and the editors are illiterates!
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