Faithful Disciple

Last month, the Italian government authorized the use of the drug Mifepriston. Mifepriston, more commonly known as RU-486 or the “abortion pill,” is used as an abortifacient in the first two months of pregnancy and for emergency contraception.

The authorization of RU-486 in Italy has brought about a frenzy of condemnation from the Vatican, which has fought against international acceptance of the abortion pill at the United Nations. The President of the Pontifical Academy for Life (the bioethics research arm of the Vatican), Archbishop Rino Fisichella, stated that though taking the abortion pill is less traumatic and less invasive than surgical abortion, “it is still abortion.”

Archbishop Fisichella told Corriere della Sera (an Italian newspaper in Milan), “it is obvious that the canonical consequences” of the pill are the same as in surgical or invasive abortion, which according to the Code of Canon Law is automatic excommunication (CC 1398). He also went on to state “do not take it, first of all, because it is evil...do not do it because the collateral effects are not known. Do not do it because science should serve life, not death.”

The Archbishop said that RU-486 “is a direct and deliberate” abortion.

(By Devin Jones)