Controversial world families conference starts in Verona

(ANSA) - Rome, March 29 - The controversial World Conference of Families, which has been criticised for promoting an anti-gay, anti-abortion and anti-feminism agenda, kicked off in Verona on Friday.
    The event, which runs until Sunday, has seen the parties supporting Premier Giuseppe Conte's government take up very different positions.
    The 5-Star Movement (M5S) is against the conference but three ministers from the League will be taking part.
    The government recently stripped the conference of its sponsorship.
    Conte said the endorsement had come personally from Family Minister Lorenzo Fontana without consulting the rest of the government. The event has come under fire for its narrow vision of the traditional family being the only acceptable model.
    Family Day leader Massimo Gandolfini attacked Italy's abortion law on the sidelines of the event, telling reporters it must be changed so that abortion is banned and millions of embryos saved.
    "From 1978 to today some six million babies have been killed and just 200,000 saved," Gandolfini told reporters on one of the main themes of the event.
    Senator Simone Pillon of the authoritarian nationalist League party told the gathering that the first part of the abortion law, Law No 194 of the Italian Republic, should be applied and not the rest.
    The first part of the law speaks of safeguarding women and pregnancies.
    Meanwhile tension remained between the League, which broadly supports the event, and its senior government partner the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S), which is broadly against it.
    Health Minister Giulia Grillo, of the M5S, described the event as "far-right". The M5S Family Undersecretary Vincenzo Spadafora said "the conference is discussing issues that have never been in the government contract with the League".
    Premier Giuseppe Conte said he would not be going to the event, because he hadn't been invited, but said "we are not afraid of the fact that ideas are circulating".
    However, one member of the M5S, Senator Tiziana Drago, did attend the event.
    "It wasn't easy to come here and I want to say that it was a personal choice," she said, saying there were M5S members who were "in favour of the traditional family".
    She said "the rights of all must be safeguarded, and those of the babies are in first place".
    Among the promotional gifts on sale in Verona were a rubber 10-week foetus, tagged "abortion stops a beating heart", a keyring with tiny feet on it, and a course to treat women who want to have abortions.
    Protesters against the event marched under a banner saying "let's not return to the Middle Ages".