THE Vatican yesterday strongly criticised President Clinton's decision to veto a bill that would have banned late-term abortions, describing it as bordering on "infanticide".
"As the American cardinals have stated, this presidential decision is even `more akin to infanticide than abortion', and thus it is not surprising that 65 per cent of self-described `pro-choice' voters also oppose partial-birth abortions," the Vatican spokesman, Dr Joaquin Navarro Valls, said in an unusually harsh statement.
The so-called "partial-birth" technique is used in rare cases after the 20th week of pregnancy. Proponents of the technique say it is used invariably because serious health normalities arise late in the pregnancy.
The bill, which Mr Clinton vetoed last week, described the procedure as one in which a doctor "partially vaginally delivers a living foetus before killing the foetus and completing the delivery".
"This presidential decision, in contradiction of the position of the American Congress, is a `shameful veto' that in effect amounts to an incredibly brutal act of aggression against innocent human life and to inalienable rights of the unborn," Dr Navarro Valls said.
"The fact that this presidential decision legalises this inhuman procedure, morally and ethically imperils the future of a society that condones it," he added.
The US ambassador to the Vatican, Mr Raymond Flynn, sent a personal letter to Mr Clinton the day before he announced his decision, advising him against such a veto. Mr Clinton, for his part, had stressed that the operation was rare and performed only in dire emergencies to protect the life or health of the mother.
Meanwhile, in Oklahoma City prayers were offered for the dead yesterday at the beginning of a day of remembrance for the 168 people killed in the April 19th, 1995, bombing that traumatised the city and stunned America.
Four prominent members of the community, including leaders of the Cheyenne and Apache nations, were to read out the names of the dead, including those of the 19 children killed by the blast in a child-care centre.