ITALY: The Gun or Slow Poison

It was Rome’s worst week of political agitation in a year. Bands of leftist youths went on a two-hour rampage to protest the death of a radical youth during an earlier demonstration. Striking metalworkers, demanding higher pay, locked arms in Rome’s Piazza Navona and with rhythmic solidarity chanted, “Governo Moro, te ne devi andá-da” (“Governo Moro, you’ve got to go-go”). Premier Aldo Moro’s shaky Christian Democratic minority government was then more directly threatened by the 20,000 Italian feminists who poured through Rome demanding that the country’s tough anti-abortion laws be rescinded. The abortion issue suddenly heated up into Moro’s most pressing political crisis—and as it grew, it even threatened to bring the Communist Party directly into government decision-making for the first time.

The feminists were protesting a law (TIME, Jan. 5) dating back to Fascist days that makes abortion a criminal act, even though an estimated 1 million Italian women now undergo such operations annually. Pressed not only by feminists but by Communists and socialists as well, moderates within the Christian Democratic Party sought to “de-penalize” the law. Unless they did, pro-abortion groups had the 500,000 signatures necessary to force a national referendum on the issue. Still reeling from the impact of a successful divorce referendum in 1974 that divided and nearly shattered his party, Moro hoped to avoid a comparable trauma with a compromise bill softening the present law.

But when the legislation was brought before the Chamber of Deputies, right-wing Christian Democrats, at the urging of the Vatican, tacked on a crippling amendment that would still allow legal abortion only in cases of rape or for medical reasons. The conservatives’ amendment passed by a margin of 298 to 286; the pivotal votes came from Italy’s small and despised neo-Fascist party. Outraged socialists protested this “black vote,” and there was even scuffling in the chamber. “This means there is nothing left to be done with the Christian Democrats,” groaned Socialist Deputy Loris Fortuna, leader of his party’s pro-abortion forces.

Mini-Compromise. Moro’s government has remained in power in recent weeks only with informal socialist support. After the socialists threatened to withdraw that support last week, the government was near collapse. If it falls, the probable result can be an early national election. In such a vote, the Communists, based on their strong showing in recent regional elections, might gain enough seats to demand a formal share in government—Italy’s long-anticipated “historic compromise.”

But with the economy in such dire shape that the lira has dropped 28% since Jan. 21, the Communists were not altogether certain that at this point they wanted such a role. Party Leader Enrico Berlinguer last week offered an alternative: a “political accord” in which the Christian Democrats would govern but socialists and Communists would participate in decisions on abortion and other major issues. The proposal sounded very much like a “mini” historic compromise. The Christian Democrats at week’s end sought instead to force a better accord in parliament. The situation left Moro—and the country—with a grim political choice. Said one political observer darkly: “It’s either the gun or slow poison.”