... and not

Crane Beach, MA (Jun 4, 2005)

Last weekend it was voting time in Italy. As I mentioned in a previous entry, italians were called to the ballots for a referendum aimed to repel parts of a new law about assisted reproduction. This new law had the effect of making fertility treatments very difficult and dangerous for women, at the same time making very hard to do stem cell research in Italy. The law also gave more rights to a 4 cells embryo than to the woman into which it is to be implanted, setting a very dangerous precedent that may be used to repel the current law legalizing abortion in Italy. Given the importance of the subject, I was hoping for a large turnout of italian voters expressing their opinion on this matter.

Well, I was disappointed. In the end only 25% of the voters showed up at the polls. Of the voters that did show up, between 80% and 90% were in favor of repelling the worst parts of this law. However, given that a minimum turnout of 50% of the voters is needed for a referendum to be valid, the law will stay as it is.

This is a clear victory for the conservative government, that managed to keep its obscurantist law by postponing the date of the referendum as far as possible in the Summer, after the schools were closed and many voters were already in vacation. It is also a victory for the Vatican, that had heavily campaigned to convince the italians to desert the ballots. It is a victory for the media (mostly owned or controlled by the italian prime minister, media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi) that didn’t inform the public about the issue. It is a clear defeat for anybody who think that Italy should be a modern country with a clear separation between Church and State, in which the rights of women should be above the right of fertilized eggs. But in fact it is a defeat of the whole italian society, because when voters are not interested in going to the polls, it is not a party that loses, but Democracy itself.