Friday Fax
Volume 9, Number 7 | February 3, 2006

Dear Colleague,

We have reported extensively on a report from a committee of experts in the European Union that has called for the ending of conscience protection for doctors who do not want to perform abortions. It seems the Italian member of the Committee dissented from the Committee's report. Though Italian, he is not Catholic. This is good news.

Spread the word.

Yours sincerely,

Austin Ruse
President
 
Italian Jurist Dissents from Pro-Abortion EU Committee Report
 

     The Friday Fax has learned that an Italian member of an expert committee of the European Union has dissented from a controversial opinion that targeted a treaty between the Vatican and the government of Slovakia. Bruno Nascimbene, Professor of Law at the University of Milan in Italy, was highly critical of an EU committee opinion which urged the curtailing of conscience rights for medical professionals who refuse to participate in abortions.

     In December, the Friday Fax reported that the EU Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights had issued a 40-page opinion on the right to conscientious objection in light of a proposed treaty between the Vatican and Slovakia. That treaty guaranteed the right of doctors in Slovakia to refuse to perform abortions and other procedures that may violate their religious and moral beliefs.

     The Network's opinion implied that because the right to conscientious objection was not "unlimited," the right to have an abortion might sometimes override it. For that reason, the Network of experts said that doctors in Slovakia and presumably in all of the EU's member states may one day be denied the right to object to performing abortions. The Network does acknowledge that its opinions, written to advise the EU on human rights matters, are not legally binding.

     Nascimbene was Italy's jurist on the Network at the time of its adopting the opinion. Though the Network did not publicize it at the time, he dissented from the Network's opinion, calling it "unfair" that the Network took evidence from pro-abortion groups like the Center for Reproductive Rights in writing its opinion, while not doing the same with evidence from pro-life groups.

     Nascimbene called it "nonsense" for the EU "to target" a treaty between Slovakia and the Vatican, when several other EU member states have established churches (such as the United Kingdom and Denmark), and laws explicitly recognizing conscientious objection rights for those nations' non-Catholic believers. He pointed out that the issue of the degree to which there should be a separation of church and state in EU member states "is out[side] of the [legal] competence of the European Union." Lastly, Nascimbene warned that the way in which the Network was curtailing the right to conscientious objection might one day lead to "totalitarianism."

     Nascimbene's pro-Vatican position is considered to be particularly unbiased in Italy because he is not a Catholic, in a nation where an overwhelming majority of the population is. He is also known as a left-wing jurisprudential thinker.
Copyright 2005 - C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute).
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