quote:

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(Rome) Tens of thousands of women marched through Milan on Saturday to demand Italy keep its liberal abortion law intact while gays rallied in Rome to push for legal recognition for same-sex couples.

Both topics have become issues in Italy's election campaign, and the Roman Catholic Church and ministers in Premier Silvio Berlusconi's conservative government were scathing in denouncing the rallies.

"These demonstrators are really nauseating," Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli, a member of the right-wing Northern League, was quoted as saying by the Italian news agency ANSA. "Family is a serious thing, based on love between a man and a woman."

Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione, who is close to the Vatican, told reporters that people's energy should be spent on pro-family efforts like finding jobs and housing.

"These are the political problems you should put the spotlight on, because without children, Italy dies," Buttiglione said.

[...]

The Milan demonstration, whose slogan was "Let's emerge from silence," was organized by women concerned that Catholic politicians, encouraged by the Vatican, will try to undo a 1978 law that makes abortion legal during the first three months of pregnancy.

Police estimated 50,000 people joined in the march, which ended in the square in front of the Duomo, the city's Gothic cathedral.

[...]

Italian bishops have made abortion a campaign issue for the first time since 1981, when Italians upheld the law in a referendum that had been backed by the Vatican in a bid to overturn the legislation.

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We've heard a lot of other crap from the right-wing-bigot politicians you've quoted, Heph, especiallly that well-named arsehole Buttiglione. (Guess I've insulted that lovely part of the human anatomy, eh?)