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The Catholic Church lost another round today when Italy approved the use of RU-486, the abortion drug. The Vatican warned of immediate excommunication for doctors prescribing the pill and for women taking it.

According to the Catholic News Service, Archbishop Fisichella announced that “it is obvious that the canonical consequences” of using RU-486 are the same as those incurred for getting a therapeutic abortion: automatic excommunication.

This is latest defeat for the Catholic Church in its efforts to ban abortion in the Vatican’s home nation.

Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, a senior church bioethicist, told the Associated Press that RU-486 is “not a drug, but poison.”

Dr. Gabriella Pacini of Woman’s Life, a group that provides medical counseling to women, said RU-486 “has been used for years in Europe, on millions of women and is considered safe and effective. Why not give Italian women a choice between pharmacological abortion and surgical abortion?”