(CRUX. Crux Staff).
After appearing to largely avoid a burgeoning Italian debate over abortion policy, the Vatican has belatedly entered the fray in a way perceived as at least indirectly supportive of a proposal from the country’s center-right government. Abortion has been legal in Italy since 1978, and ever since the basic permissibility of the procedure has been a matter of broad social consensus. The political fault lines tend to break down not over legality, but, in part, over how aggressive the state ought to be in promoting alternatives to abortion.