Rome, Italy - Italy has approved the use of the abortion drug RU-486, capping years of debate and defying opposition from the Vatican, which warned of immediate excommunication for doctors prescribing the pill and for women who use it.
The pill is already available in a number of other European countries. Its approval by Italy's drug regulation authorities was praised by women's groups and pro-choice organizations, which say the pill will provide women with an additional, noninvasive procedure.
It drew the immediate protest of the Catholic Church, which opposes abortion and contraception.
"That's not how you alleviate human suffering, that's not how you help women, that's not how you help mankind," Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, a senior church bioethicist, said in an interview Friday with Associated Press Television News.
The Italian Drug Agency ruled after a meeting that ended late Thursday that the drug, which terminates pregnancy by causing the embryo to detach from the uterine wall, cannot be sold in pharmacies but can only be administered by doctors in a hospital.
The agency said in a statement that the pill can only be taken up to the seventh week of pregnancy, and not up to the ninth as is the case in other countries. Women who used the pill between the seventh and the ninth week of pregnancy incurred more risks and had often needed surgery, it said.
The decision is expected to be effective in about two months, the agency said.
The 4-1 vote at the agency's executive branch comes about two years after the agency first started looking at the issue. The pill became available in some parts of Italy on an experimental basis in 2006.
For the Catholic Church, the agency's decision was the latest defeat in its efforts to ban or restrict abortion in the nation that hosts the Vatican.